


Gravitational Pull

by antigrav_vector



Series: (R)BB fics - all pairings [8]
Category: Captain America (Comics), Iron Man (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Bondage, Cock Rings, Comic Book Science, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Get Together, Improvised Sex Toys, Intercrural Sex, Kink Exploration, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Magic, Misunderstandings, Multiple Orgasms, Mutual Pining, Mystery, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Outer Space, Pining, Sex, Sex Pollen, Sex Toys, Silver Age, Space Flight, Tony Angst, Truth Serum, Truth Spells, Zero-gravity sex, implied Hank/Jan, misuse of lab equipment, real world science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 18:33:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8633668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antigrav_vector/pseuds/antigrav_vector
Summary: A strange temple floating in space is discovered, and Steve and Tony are the logical choices to go investigate. What they find is going to make or break their relationship...





	1. Zero Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2016 Cap-IM Big Bang. This comes with [VERY NSFW art by Krusca](http://artingkrusca.tumblr.com/post/153613624308/art-for-cap-ironman-2016-big-bang-heres-the), and all of y'all should go heap some love on it. It's lovely!
> 
> With thanks to my wonderful and ridiculously well-read beta [Muccamukk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/)! Thanks also to [Veldeia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Veldeia/), who gave some helpful pointers and comments.
> 
> Also. Linked footnotes in the text will also contain links back to said text. They're meant to provide background, and can be skipped over if you're not inclined to follow them, but they do provide context for a lot of the events referenced.
> 
> ALSO ALSO.
> 
> This story comes with a built-in sequel, which contains tentacle sex. If that's not your thing, don't click on, once you hit the end of the main bang entry.

It had taken them a while to get to this point, Tony reflected as he worked his way through the mountain of memos and requests that Mrs. Arbogast had passed him that morning. He was about a third of the way through them, and it was nearly time for lunch. That was partially because his thoughts kept wandering, though.

He couldn't seem to stop worrying at the way that the team had been surprisingly accepting of him, even now that they knew who he was thanks to Molecule Man's interference  
[1], despite his somewhat tarnished reputation in his identity as Tony Stark. That had been weeks ago, now, and things had smoothed right back out into their routine afterwards. Tigra had chosen to retire in the aftermath, and not one of them had been able to gainsay her. But that had meant calling up Wasp and Yellowjacket to rejoin the team. He and Steve and Thor were all powerful in their own right, but a team composed only of three heavy hitters wasn't going to do the trick for long.

That had meant paperwork to get Jan and Hank reinstated and officially make them both Avengers again, and in many ways, it had been great to see the two of them again, even if their return had brought with it all the usual chaos, in the form of supervillain attacks to fend off. It seemed like every time the team roster changed, things went to hell, in one way or another. Tony was convinced it was the supervillain community's way of welcoming the new members of the team and getting them broken in.

In many ways that was routine, too.

But on a personal level, Tony felt things were a bit awkward, yet. The big exception to the status quo that had existed before Molecule Man's attack was that now Jan insisted on using his name regardless of which identity he was currently in, while they were at the Mansion. Mostly the others stuck to using the appropriate name for the situation, adapting depending on what he was wearing. To them he was Iron Man in the armour, and Tony in his suit and tie.

Steve didn't seem to want to change a thing, though, and that was odd. Tony had told Steve he could dispense with the 'Mr. Stark' nonsense after the end of the third day after his identity had been revealed, but Steve still resisted. He wouldn't give Tony a reason for it either. And in his identity as Iron Man, the story was similar. Steve would only say that it felt too familiar to call him 'Tony', and stuck to calling him Shellhead. As though that weren't even more familiar than using his given name.

It was a weird contradiction in terms, and made Tony feel almost uneasy in his own skin. He didn't like it.

Sure. It was clear that none of his teammates were angry at him. If anything, they had gotten warmer towards him, in both his identities. They'd started treating Tony Stark like they did Shellhead. Well. With one exception. And it was the one person on the team whose good opinion Tony wanted most.

Stifling a frustrated growl, Tony surveyed the mountains of paperwork on his desk. He desperately needed a distraction.

\------

It was as if his thoughts had summoned that distraction, Tony mused to himself twelve hours later, as the sun rose over Manhattan.

One of his satellites had suddenly detected an odd power signature in the vicinity of the moon late the previous night. He hadn't been able to identify what it was, either, with at nothing his disposal but the instrumentation in his satellites. 

Whatever it was, it was tiny, and only a few other people had noticed it, yet. Of those, most were manning observatories located throughout the world. He had contacted three, and all of them had already independently confirmed his readings with their own instruments and telescopes.

The astronomers Tony had contacted had had a few initial guesses as to what the mysterious object was, and all three groups had already begun drafting publications on the thing, but all of them felt a closer investigation would be necessary. Their theories as to what the object was varied widely, of course. One group thought it was the remains of some meteor with interesting stalagmite formations on its surface. The second felt it was more likely to be a clump of debris left over from one of the missions to the moon, which had somehow broken free of the moon's surface. The third wasn't sure what the object was, but they were fairly certain it wasn't natural.

At this point, it was only a matter of time before the news leaked and speculation hit the airwaves. The number of headlines in the newspapers alone would be ridiculous, and bizarre theories filled with inane nonsense would be spread throughout the globe come the morning television broadcasts.

NASA had also confirmed the signal he'd picked up when he'd contacted them, and suggested that the Avengers take a trip into space to investigate, since NASA themselves hadn't the budget, but didn't want to lose out on the possible discovery of an alien civilization. Whoever the Avengers picked for this mission would be going up there, loaded down with all kinds of instrumentation and with injunctions not to lose any opportunity to record their readings on whatever it was.

Naturally, that meant the Avengers had assembled. They gathered in their usual meeting room, settling at their usual places at the large round table Tony had placed there. The question of who was going on the mission to the moon and who would play liaison for the duration of the joint mission was more difficult to resolve than the question of whether they should send anyone. Everyone but Tony was in their uniforms.

"Well, Tony's the obvious first choice to go up there," Wasp pointed out, sitting at the large round table they used for briefings, elegant as always in her brightly colored costume. "The rest of us wouldn't know how to make heads or tails of those readings NASA wants."

Thor nodded. "Aye," he rumbled in his deep voice, "'Tis a fair assessment you make, Wasp. Don Blake might perhaps be of service, were anyone to get injured, but," he made a wry face, "I fear he would not be well suited to such travel."

"None of us are, I'd say, except maybe you, Thor. You're the only one of us who wouldn't need a space suit," Tony pointed out in response before turning back to Jan. "But you make a good point about the instruments we'll have aboard, Wasp. Giant Man," he turned to face Hank, "are you interested?"

"Under other circumstances I would be, Shellhead," Hank replied. "But I'm not sure what that kind of solar radiation would do to my Pym Particles. Something tells me it would be a bad idea."

That left only one option, really, unless he wanted to insist that Thor go with him. Tony eyed Steve. Steve's expression was a mix of excitement and disappointment. "Well, Winghead?" Tony prompted. "You got a good reason to stay home, too?"

Steve grinned, the disappointment clearing and giving way to what looked oddly like relief. "Can't say that I do. I won't be much help to you with those readings, but we've always made a good team. If Thor is willing to stay home, I think I'll take this on."

Thor huffed, stifling a chuckle. "Nay, I shall not insist. I have not yet seen all that there is of Midgard, and would bide my time here rather than leave it unnecessarily."

In other words, Tony translated, he wanted to go commune with the wilderness instead. Well, who was he to begrudge Thor his enjoyments. Jan laughed at Thor's not-quite-refusal and started teasing him about being a tree-hugging hippie. Hank watched her indulgently, and Steve... Well. Steve had quietly disappeared. Presumably to begin preparing himself.

Turning back to the others, Tony caught their attention by clearing his throat. "So are the rest of you willing to play ground control? I've seen how ridiculously closely NASA monitors their astronauts, and that's not really going to work well with our usual _modus operandi_."

Jan sniffed. "Of course we are, right guys?"

Hank nodded. "I'm not about to miss out on the chance to get my hands on this kind of data before even NASA can."

"If my assistance is needed," Thor told the couple, "you have but to request it. My knowledge on such matters is, perforce, limited."

Tony couldn't help the relief that loosened the tension in his shoulders. He hadn't _actually_ thought they'd refuse, but his imagination was good at painting in any number of worst case scenarios. It was part and parcel of being a futurist. "Right. We'll set it up so that Steve and I do hourly check ins with you on the dedicated Avengers frequency we use for missions, and let you guys handle NASA while we get stuff done."

"You can count on us," Jan grinned. "Make sure you get lots of pictures."

Hank nodded. "I may not be much help outside of the scientific aspects of this mission, but I'll do what I can."

"I'll probably have to transmit all of our readings home directly from the jet," Tony nodded. "I'll give you access to a dedicated portion of my systems for the duration, so you can store everything. You'll have to keep an eye on what you offer NASA, though, since neither Steve nor I have taken our masks off in public. I, for one, am not ready to, either."

Hank gave him a solemn look. "We're not known, either, and it's probably best to keep it that way for now. We'll use our callsigns anytime we're not on our own comms channels."

"I think that takes care of most of the important points. That leaves the actual physical preparations." Tony stood from his seat at their round table, and ran a hand through his hair. "I'll have to check over the Avenjet and find out what modifications it needs for this."

Jan stepped over to him and patted his shoulder. "I'm sure you and Steve will do great up there. You two have always worked well together."

Tony had to bite back a sigh. It was true; they did make a good team. But this new awkwardness between them was really starting to bother him. It was as if Steve wanted to pull away from Tony but not Iron Man, and that was confusing as hell, now that the team knew they were one and the same.

\------

After some lengthy initial arguments, NASA had reluctantly agreed to the team's plans with regards to turning this operation into a joint mission, and their insistence on handling their communications internally, due to their secret identities. They would be allowed to maintain their Avengers only channel that NASA couldn't listen in on and censor anything sensitive relevant to their identities in material that needed to be shared with NASA. In return, they would also use a NASA specified channel for critical mission updates, and wear the bio monitors required for all astronauts.

It took NASA three days to assemble and install the equipment they insisted was essential to the mission -- consisting primarily of cameras designed to record in varying wavelength spectra in both video and still images, a mass spectrometer, infrared spectrometry, and -- in Tony's state of the art Avenjet. He'd only recently redesigned it to be space worthy on a whim, but that was paying off in spades now. Initially he'd just wanted it to be of a caliber similar to the U-2 spy planes the military was so proud of. The U-2 incidents a few years back  
[2] had made the political situation very delicate, and the US government was very keen to take advantage of any way to rub the Russians' noses in US technological superiority.

Tony didn't see any real benefit to antagonising the rest of the world over something so stupidly trivial as a difference of political and economic opinions, but then, that was why he was no politician. On the other hand, in the beginning he'd also been in favor of the decision to go to Vietnam, but that was neither here nor there since the conflict was officially over.  
[3]

The current altitude record for fixed wing flight was held by the Russians, though, and that was something that the US government was eyeing as a good opportunity for a publicity stunt. The Russians had managed to get a pilot and payload up to an altitude of over 115,000 feet in a MiG fighter just last year  
[4]. It was a feat that hadn't yet been achieved by anyone else in the world. Tony was considering making an attempt to break that record with one of the jet designs he'd been toying with, sometime in the nebulous future. Something like that could be fun, and would generate good publicity for Stark Industries' products.

His armour had had the capability to get to space for years, now, but there was no way he would be able to carry all of the instruments NASA had insisted on on his back. He did have a number of sophisticated scanners built into his suit, too. The thing was that NASA wanted data his suit couldn't collect, such as mass spectrometry readings.

It was frustrating. Tony, who'd wanted to get the mission started as soon as possible, had chafed at the delay, anxious to get underway, lest the object's orbit around the moon decay and send it flying off into space, or, worse, crashing into the moon's surface. In an attempt to get things moving more quickly, he'd helped modify the cargo area of the Avenjet to hold the instruments and then mount the instruments securely in the new frames so that they would survive the launch intact.

But now, finally, they were ready. Tony was in his armour and Steve in his EVA suit at NASA's insistence -- apparently the record speed with which Tony had made his modifications to the Avenjet hadn't inspired confidence in how rugged the overall product was. Tony had all his little hidden utility compartments filled with all the possibly useful tools he could imagine needing, including a multitool with more functions than you could shake a stick at, a bottle of the dry lube he'd formulated himself for use in case of the releases on his armour jamming shut  
[5], and a set of wrenches. All instruments had been mounted and tested, the bio monitors had been applied, and the Avenjet was fueled. The door and window seals had been checked, and they had enough food and water for a week and a half.

Their flight plan allotted one day for travel to the object, whatever it was -- telescope observation during the last three days, in which it had come further into view as it slowly drifted along its orbital path around the moon, now suggested a complex structure of some sort that had broken off some larger complex -- followed by five days on site, and one day to travel back home.

"So Winghead," Tony turned to face his friend and teammate, "are you ready for this?"

"Never been to space before," Steve quipped, tugging awkwardly at the space suit NASA had provided for him for the fifth time in as many minutes. "Let's go."

Cueing his comms, Tony watches as Jan's picture popped up on the interface of his helmet. "Wasp, all systems are green on our end."

"You're all green here, too," came the reply. "Good luck, boys. Houston, we are go for launch."

\------------

[1] Avengers, #216. Click here to return to text.

[2] The U-2 spy plane incidents were among what I think of as the "highlights" of the Cold War. They were used to spy on the Soviet Union and many other politically sensitive regions, and it backfired pretty spectacularly. One U-2 plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, and another during the Cuban Missile Crisis. [[Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2)]. Click here to return to text.

[3] Despite the Paris Peace Accord, signed in January 1973, the fighting in Vietnam continued. Direct U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973. For more detail, follow the [[Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War)]. Click here to return to text.

[4] "On 25 July 1973, Fedotov reached 35,230m with 1,000 kg payload, and 36,240 m with no load (an absolute world record)." [[Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25#Record_breaker)]. Click here to return to text.

[5] Dry lube is based on teflon, and this is Tony's specially designed formulation. He's designed it to be safe to use even if he's bleeding, which is a pretty neat trick! | [[product info link](http://www.finishlineusa.com/products/chain-lubricants/dry-lube)]  
| [[Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene)]. Click here to return to text.


	2. Day 1

To Tony's relief, the launch went off without a hitch, the many instruments mounted in the Avenjet's hold remaining intact throughout their trip through the atmosphere, and then it was just a question of keeping an eye on his automated controls, to ensure they sent the craft along the planned trajectory. Steve, after the initial excitement of feeling the craft kick him in the kidneys, seemed to have all but dozed off. Tony smirked to himself behind the barrier of his armour's helmet. That really wasn't too surprising considering that their launch had been scheduled quite late in the evening and Steve had probably been awake for more than 24 hours by that point.

His first hourly check-in had been short and to the point. _All systems green, Avenjet on course._

Jan had acknowledged and then things had gone silent again, leaving Tony to turn back to his thoughts.

The Avenjet was designed to be faster than the Luna I probe that the Soviets had launched in 1959, and which still held the speed record for getting to the moon [1]. And, Tony mused to himself with a subtle smirk he knew his faceplate would hide, he was doing it with a manned craft, which was substantially more difficult. The Luna I probe had contained nothing but a basic set of instrumentation.

In all, they'd have 26 hours of flight time once they broke atmosphere, and the plan was to take it in shifts. Two hours together, one at the beginning of the trip and one at the end, and three eight hour shifts in the middle. It wouldn't be much longer before he could engage the autopilot, and check on it every so often. By the time he got a chance to sleep, Tony reflected, he would have reached the point of being awake for almost 26 hours, himself.

The silence in the jet stretched out, until, five minutes later, Tony leaned forward and punched the button to engage the computer steering. He'd have to take over again and fly manually for the last hour. The deceleration needed to get into lunar orbit alongside the object they were supposed to be investigating would be a tricky maneuver.

Shaking himself awake again, Steve straightened in his seat. "I'm starting to wonder if I should have brought a book," he joked.

Tony huffed at him. "Well, it's too late now. I'm not turning the jet around."

"I'll manage."

A short silence reigned, in which Tony busied himself with checking all the gauges and their trajectory, and felt Steve stare at the side of the armour's helmet.

When he could take it no longer, Tony broke the silence building between them, heavy as a pile of boulders. "Something you want to ask me, Steve?"

Sounding almost thoughtful, Steve replied. "A few things, really."

"Well," Tony tried to brace himself for the conversation that was likely coming, "go on."

Steve looked like he was chewing on the words, his jaw working for a few moments before he spoke. "Why do you go out of your way to act so different around the team in your two identities? We know who you are. You don't have to pretend."

Tony winced. _Oh, but I do._ "The team might know who I am, Steve," he answered, "but the world at large doesn't. And I don't want to slip up at the wrong moment."

"Hm." Steve sounded disbelieving.

Tony rolled his eyes at his longtime friend and teammate. "Fine, believe what you want," he grumbled. "But it's true. Stark Industries really doesn't need the instability that revealing my identity to the public would cause."

"How do you know it would cause instability," Steve challenged. "Why wouldn't it give your credibility a boost? Having a hero in charge seems like a pretty good move to me."

Wishing he could run his hands through his hair, Tony groaned loudly. "If only. No, Steve. The shareholders will only see the costs associated with the Avengers, and not the benefits. They only care about the money we spend fixing up the city after missions, or fights against Doombots. Not the PR we do, or the people we save."

"Then they're short-sighted fools, and you really shouldn't be following their dictates."

The silence that fell after that was slightly strained. Tony didn't want to argue. Not right at the beginning of a week-long trip they would be spending in isolation together. But what Steve just couldn't -- or maybe wouldn't -- see was that Wall Street was filled with pessimists and cynics, and both sets of people were greedy.

Maybe you really did have to be Captain America to see the good in an investor from Wall Street or a stock broker.

Well, he had the first 8 hour shift, so there was a chance this discussion would just go away on its own, disappearing while Steve got some sleep.

Sure enough, after the silence had drawn out for a few minutes, Tony stubbornly staying silent, Steve had shrugged and made his way over to the tiny compartment where their sleeping bags hung, suspended, then tried to settle in to get some sleep. Somewhat to Tony's surprise, given how he'd been tugging at his space suit, Steve had even managed it fairly quickly.

Left to his thoughts in the silence of the Avenjet's cockpit, Tony had bitten back a sigh born of frustration and tried to settle himself more comfortably in his seat.

It only halfway worked. His armour, high tech though it was, wasn't really meant to be worn for long periods of time. The under layer of his coveralls helped, but it could only do so much. The bio monitor kept getting caught on the coveralls' zipper too, restricting his movements every so often when he was forced to stop and untangle the leads from the metal teeth.

As comfortable as he was going to get for the moment, Tony checked on the navigation system.

Everything was still green.

This was going to be a long trip.

\------

When he woke Steve for the second shift, Tony got a very grumpy rumble of a sound in reply. It made him snicker. "Come on, Winghead," he cajoled, "up and at 'em."

"Ugh," Steve tried to stretch, half successfully, running out of room when his hands hit the avenjet cabin's ceiling. "I really don't know how you can stand to be in your armour for so long. I'm already sick of the lead weight they call a space suit."

Tony's snicker turned into a chuckle. "Well, it's the price you pay for coming up here. I don't want you suffocating or getting irradiated, and neither does NASA. Now that we're well past launch, though, you don't have to wear it except when you go outside. The air seals aren't leaking, after all."

After a brief silence, in which Steve tried to wake himself fully, Tony went on. "All systems are still green, and we're on course for that mysterious object. You know the drill: wake me if anything breaks."

Stifling a yawn, Steve nodded, acknowledging the instructions with a wave of his free hand. "Get some rest, Shellhead." Steve paused for a beat before he added, "I'm stripping this thing off before I do anything else."

Tony swallowed back a groan, then closed his eyes and did his best to will himself to sleep. Thinking about Steve and stripping was counterproductive in the extreme, and he wasn't going to let himself. He wasn't. He'd need the rest when they got to their objective.

At least, thankfully, their earlier argument seemed to be forgotten.

\------

[1] The Soviet Luna 1 probe completed a flyby of the Moon in 1959. It only took 36 hours to make the trip, and travelled at an average speed of about 10,500 km/hr. [[info link](http://www.universetoday.com/13562/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-to-the-moon/)]. Click here to return to text.


	3. Day 2

When Tony woke, the surface of the moon was much closer than he'd expected, looming larger and larger in the view they had through the jet's windshield. A glance at the clock showed him why. Steve had let him sleep much longer than the eight hours he was supposed to. In fact, it had been almost twelve. He hadn't slept so long at a stretch in… Tony had to think about it. A long time, he decided when he couldn't seem to remember when the last time was. Probably before his debut as Iron Man.

"Steve," he began, knowing his tone held more than a hint of annoyance, "why--"

"You needed the rest," Steve interrupted him. "I wanted you at your best for the manual piloting you need to do to get the jet into position for the rest of the mission. You and I both know that's the critical part of the trip."

Damn the man, he was right, and Tony couldn't easily argue that. "I'd have been fine," he eventually said, "and you know it. You don't have to mother hen so much."

Steve gave him a sardonic look. "If I didn't push you to rest, you'd run yourself ragged."

And there was the mild censure, come right back again. Tony tried not to let himself dwell on the way that stung. He always tried so damned hard to live up to Steve's expectations and failed. Sure, it was mostly his fault that he had more than one full time job to juggle, but he'd thought maybe Steve might make allowances for that.

Biting his tongue to hold back his snappish reply, Tony busied himself with checking the instrument panel instead. He'd have a four hour shift babysitting the navigation systems and then the manual piloting Steve had mentioned. "Get some rest, Winghead," he managed to get out. And he was pretty sure he managed to do it without sounding too upset.

Steve gave him an odd look, but let it go.

For now at least.

It could come up again anytime, Tony knew. Shifting to lean back in his seat again and closing his eyes, Steve seemed to just fall asleep on command. Tony could only watch enviously.

Indulging himself and watching Steve for a few seconds, Tony had to wonder what would come of this mission. After a week isolated together in space, he suspected, he and Steve would either manage to patch things up and fix the rifts that had sprung open between them in the wake of his unmasking… or alienate one another completely.

Right now, it was looking rather like the latter option was more likely. Steve didn't seem to want to reconcile anything.

Steve never did seem to realize it when Tony actually asked for his help. Shellhead was another matter. Shellhead and Winghead could read one another like open books.

So what was so different about Steve Rogers and Tony Stark? Why were they having so much trouble adjusting? Tony was pretty sure he hadn't been treating Steve any differently, in either of his personas. It should have been a smooth transition.

Well. As smooth as such a transition could be anyway.

A beep from the navigation systems grabbed his attention. That was the fifteen minute warning. He'd spent more time lost in thought than he'd realized. Those four hours had just sped by. Not even his check-ins with Wasp had really made any impact on his distraction. Of course, it helped that there hadn't really been anything interesting to report.

Turning to prod Steve awake, he huffed quietly to himself within the privacy of his helmet. Here went nothing.

Steve came awake more easily this time. "We there?" He mumbled around a yawn.

"Soon," Tony reassured him. "I'm about to start the manual flight systems back up. Our heading is still correct, but our target drifted a bit while we made our approach. I'll have to make some adjustments, to get us into synchronous orbit around the moon with it."

Steve nodded. "I'll take your word for it. Any idea what it is yet?"

"I can't tell from this distance. My armour's sensors aren't sensitive enough to get readings from thousands of kilometers away, and until we can get into position it'll be behind the moon, relative to the jet." Tony shrugged, exaggerating the motion so that it would translate through the armour. "I'll know more once we're a bit closer."

\------

It took most of the next hour for Tony to delicately maneuver the Avenjet into lunar orbit alongside the weird object -- which definitely resembled a building now that they were close enough to see it clearly -- and then another for them to draw into what Tony deemed a reasonable range from which to try using his suit sensors to get some initial scans of the weird object. Steve spent the majority of that time fidgeting. Tony was sure Steve would have been tapping his foot, if he'd dared.

"So, what is it," Steve demanded after an interval that just _barely_ qualified as long enough for Tony to finish running a scan.

Tony stifled his bemused huff at Steve's impatience. "Can't answer that yet, Winghead," he replied. "But it actually looks like one of those theories everyone thought was bunk might hold water. No one thought this could really be any kind of structured building, but it really does look like one. It's got all the earmarks of being 'built' rather than having formed naturally."

"And are the builders still inside?"

"That's the thing." Tony would have scratched at the back of his head had he not been wearing the armour. "There are no life signs I can detect coming from it, based on my scans for heat signatures and organic molecules."

Steve raised an eyebrow at him. "And does that mean there aren't any, that they're all dead, or that they're so alien you can't pick them up?"

Putting up his faceplate Tony grinned at him, pleased as ever by Steve's razor sharp intellect and grasp of such matters. "I have no damn clue."

Steve grumbled something under his breath that Tony ignored in favor of continuing his scans, narrating as he finished each one. The coarse grained survey scan he'd done to try to detect any organic molecules turned up surprisingly clean.

"Huh. That's strange." Tony squinted at the readings, and started the scan again.

"What is it, Shellhead?" Steve looked almost concerned. "What's wrong?"

"Hmm. It's not that anything's _wrong_ , per se." Tony eyed the second set of readings as it came in. It didn't deviate from baseline except for some random noise. "The scan for organic molecules found nothing."

Steve raised an eloquent eyebrow at him but said nothing, trying to get Tony to elaborate.

Tony nodded, instead. "My sentiments exactly."

\------

The photos Tony planned to take ranged through the spectrum of wavelengths from UV to visible light, to infrared and X-Rays. He would be doing that part of the mission on his own, since it required him to do a space walk, and someone still needed to keep an eye on the Avenjet's controls. As long as the jet wasn't tethered to the temple for their analysis, someone needed to be at the stick. Their orbit around the moon wasn't stable, because they were forced to follow the orbital path of the mystery structure. All of this, taken together, meant that someone had to make sure that the jet didn't crash. If that happened, they'd be in big trouble.

Getting ready to do the spacewalk had been an exercise in patience. Steve had suddenly gone mother hen, and started worrying over everything, and it had been all Tony could do to stop Steve from trying to cram a first aid kit in the armour somewhere, and, failing that, in with the cameras he would be carrying. And nevermind that it would be useless to him until he could get back to the jet. Hell, irradiating it would probably render it useless anyway.

The memory made Tony shake his head as the airlock cycled. When the light went green, Tony carefully maneuvered himself through the door, with a care for the cameras he was carrying, and pushed off the side of the jet. At least the armour was functioning at peak efficiency. He was unlikely to get into much trouble for the time being.

Drifting through open space was terrifying, though. Tony had to fight not to let the knowledge of just how far from home -- and help -- he was get to him. Focusing on the weird structure he was about to document helped.

"You alright, Shellhead?"

So did Steve's voice, even if he was still fretting. "I'm fine. All systems are nominal. Great view out here."

Steve snorted, wry amusement in his tone as he answered. "Take a picture. It'll last longer."

Laughing, Tony did exactly that, just for the hell of it. Bringing himself to a halt with his repulsors he turned and brought the visible-light camera up to his faceplate. The light reflecting off the earth made it seem to glow, and all but took his breath away. He just knew it always would, no matter how often he saw it. No photo could ever do justice to the way their planet seemed to rest against the background like a jewel set in a black velvet case.

Once he was satisfied, he snapped the picture, and turned back toward his objective. The near-spherical chunk of rock tumbled like a meteor as it circled the moon, its movements just erratic enough to suggest an uneven mass distribution, or perhaps a change in density.

As he approached it, Tony watched the fine details of its construction come a little clearer. He would be taking photos and video of the thing from every conceivable angle, so that the images could be reconstructed later, by NASA's scientists. It looked to Tony like someone had hollowed out a chunk of rock and crammed a temple inside the resulting hollow sphere. Portions of the sphere's walls had been cut away to form intricately carved and delicately curving pillars decorated with who knew what weird space monsters. The only thing Tony recognized in the artwork from his current vantage point a few tens of meters away was the suggestion of quite a lot of tentacles.

 _Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!_ [6]

Tony had to suppress an amused snort at his own thoughts.

Going back to what he was supposed to be doing, Tony snapped another few pictures, then switched over to using the video camera. He made a circuit around the object in each of the three axial directions, then decided to move in closer to take some more detailed images. Once he was back on the Avenjet, he would need to do some more detailed calculations for the temple's orbit, and see if it would be stable enough to let them look around inside.

If the temple was likely to stay reasonably close to its current lunar orbit for a few more days, they could bring the jet in closer and tether it to some part of the structure while they did their investigations. It was tempting to say that they could use the jet to tow the temple into a more stable orbit, but that would risk damaging both jet and temple. It would remain a last-resort plan until they needed it.

"Shellhead?" Steve's voice broke into his thoughts again, and Tony reflexively turned to look over his shoulder at the jet hanging weightlessly a couple hundred meters behind him against a backdrop of bright blue planet and pinpricks of more distant stars. "Status?"

Such a mother hen. "All systems are green, Winghead. I want a closer look at those pillars."

"Don't go getting yourself stuck," Steve groused. "We don't have any easy way to get you back out."

"Yes, mom." Tony rolled his eyes, knowing Steve wouldn't be able to see him do it.

Carefully using his thrusters to maneuver himself closer, Tony made sure to use the lowest amount of thrust it was possible to get out of his boot jets. In space, the tiniest amount of force could send you flying off in unexpected directions if you weren't paying close attention.

Even so, he had to brake carefully when he got closer to his objective, and make sure he wouldn't crash into a wall face first. NASA would be justifiably pissed if he broke something out of sheer carelessness.

He spent another twenty minutes taking more pictures of the outer surface, and those weird pillars. The creatures featured there really looked lifelike enough to slither right off the pillars and into your nightmares. Or, well. Maybe not in Tony's case. But just about anyone else would rightly be more than a little wary. All the moreso, considering the perception of tentacled creatures in most media.

He himself had rather a different reaction to tentacles, though it was definitely a matter of context.

And, well, what these tentacles were doing was… perhaps best not described in polite company. It looked like an orgy of drugged and very horny octopodes, poured onto a large flat surface, allowed to get very intimate with one another, and then used as the negative half of a casting mold before the cast got wrapped around one of these pillars.

Swallowing against the sudden dryness of his mouth, Tony continued documenting the pillars. Let someone else decide which of these were fit to publish. He wasn't interested in dealing with that aspect. He took a few still images using his suit's cameras, though, for later private consumption.

As he continued taking pictures, careful to keep track of the number of film exposures he had left to work with, he caught occasional glimpses of the interior of the temple, brightly illuminated in some places by the sun, and more dimly in others by the reflecting off the earth and moon. There wasn't enough light to properly document the interior with his cameras from here, though, and Tony made a note to come back with a light source he could use to illuminate the walls. They looked like they had some kind of mural or fresco on them depicting more tentacled creatures, from what little he could distinguish from here. The interior of the structure was nearly empty, from what little he could see without entering through the front door, and that was something he intended not to do alone. Possible hazards aside, he wouldn't have time to do so on this spacewalk before he ran out of air.

There was a large level floor that took up most of the space available within the temple, very naturally drawing the onlooker's eyes farther back into the large room to rest on a small altar with what looked like a row of square containers and, behind it, a statue of what Tony assumed was their god at the very far end of the single room. It was very reminiscent of the structure of the ancient Greek temples he had seen before. Well, that was to say, it would have been if a Greek temple had been likely to contain a statue of what looked rather like a man-octopus hybrid. The upper half of the figure was humanoid in shape -- though its head and upper limbs all looked oddly proportioned -- starting from what Tony assumed was the creature's waist. Its, well, arms, for lack of a scientific term, lacked hands, and elbows, but were clearly distinct from its 'legs'. They had no suckers, like Tony was used to seeing on earth's octopodes, but were instead very smooth and looked almost muscular. From the waist down, the creature was a tangle of tentacles that seemed to stretch in every direction. There were more than an octopus would have had. Probably twice as many, but it was impossible to count them, with the way some were obscured by the harsh shadows inside the large room. Those did have some structures on them that looked like suckers, from afar, but could really have been almost anything.

It took some effort to wrench his thoughts away from that statue and its possible implications about the society that had built this structure, but he managed after a couple of tries. Looking more closely at the rest of the room, he could just about make out what looked like writing on the far wall of the structure, as well. It was half hidden behind the statue, from his vantage point, and Tony squinted, hoping that would make it easier to read. Oddly, the characters looked familiar, for all that the writing itself made no sense. He didn't have time to decipher it now, so he set the puzzle aside for later. They did have a few more days here to work with and he would have to work quickly to get the last of his photos taken in time to get back to the Avenjet safely.

By the time Tony was satisfied that he had enough pictures, his air supply was beginning to run low, and he knew he would need to get back to the jet to let Steve fuss over him some more. And possibly show him a few photos, on the off chance that they couldn't physically go inside the temple.

Tony was really hoping they would be able to, though. He wanted to know what that writing was all about.

"--llhead! Respond!" Steve's worried voice jolted him out of his musings and Tony turned to see the Avenjet slowly and cautiously maneuvering closer, coming into view around the side of the temple. "Damn it. Shellhead!"

"I'm fine, Cap," Tony replied, somewhat baffled, as he realised it had been quite some time since he'd heard Steve say a word over their comms. "I'm coming to you. Hold position."

"What the hell do you think you were doing?" Steve sounded angry now, as though all the worry had just hit its threshold value and rolled over into snappishness. "You know better than to go comms-dark during a mission!"

Tony blinked. "What are you talking about? My comms have been on."

"You didn't respond to my last five hails," Steve replied hotly. "So either you went dark or you were ignoring me, and I can't say I really appreciate either!"

Tony made a face. "I told you already: I didn't turn off my comms. You made no hails."

"I damn well did!" Steve growled, frustrated, and brought the Avenjet back into its holding pattern, taking station on the temple again. Albeit a lot closer than it had been before. "Why the hell didn't you answer me, then?"

"I heard no hails!" Tony wished he could rub at the headache forming between his eyes. The comms signal would work in environments where they had buildings between them. They were based in New York, after all, which contained a lot of high-rise buildings. Especially downtown. So a single comparatively small structure shouldn't, logically, do anything to their communications. And the temple hadn't even been physically between him and the jet. There was no way Steve had hailed him. Tony would have heard and answered, if Steve had tried to get his attention.

Making sure he was on the Avengers frequency only, he went on, the words just boiling up out of him. "Okay, setting aside the hurt feelings over the thing I didn't do," he shot back, annoyed that Steve was annoyed and wanting some answers, "why have you been so stand-offish lately? It's like I can't speak a sentence as Tony before you clam up and want Shellhead back. Kinda makes a man feel unwanted."

"What?" Steve was audibly caught between confusion and anger now. "What are you talking about?"

Feeling vindictively pleased, Tony said nothing, making his way to the airlock at the back of the Avenjet in pointed silence. As he got the lock closed behind him, Steve made another aggravated sound and took a breath.

"We're continuing this later," he told Tony. "Once we're home."

"Fine by me," Tony grumbled as he waited impatiently for the lock to cycle and let him into the jet. It took a few seconds, and then he was pushing off the wall of the jet, sending himself floating through the microgravity towards the tiny excuse for sleeping quarters they had aboard the jet. "I'm going to get some shut-eye. Wake me in a couple of hours."

Taking off his armour in silence and biting back a sigh of relief at finally getting to remove it, Tony started the air reserve recharging so that he could use it again after he'd slept, and eyed the sleeping bags hung suspended between floor and ceiling. He'd used his once before on the trip out here, but it still felt really weird to sleep standing up, even knowing he'd feel no difference if he lay down.

Stepping inside it and doing up the velcro closures, Tony dimmed the lights and closed his eyes.

Sleep was a while in coming.

\------

[6] As I'm pretty sure all of you have guessed, Tony's referring to H.P. Lovecraft and his stories of the Elder Gods [ [Wikipedia link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft) | [Wikipedia link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Call_of_Cthulhu) ]. The first appearance of the well-known incantation has been debated for a while, but [this](http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/104232/where-did-the-phrase-i%C3%A4-i%C3%A4-cthulhu-fhtagn-first-appear) is the best reference I could google. Click here to return to text.


	4. Day 3

It took some time for him to properly come awake after his all-too-brief nap and Tony groaned as he dug through their supplies for something caffeinated.

By the time he'd found and drunk it, Steve had appeared at his shoulder. "Hey," he opened, voice quiet.

Tony didn't reply verbally. He was still a bit annoyed over the spat earlier. The only real concession Steve got was a tilt of Tony's head that signaled he was listening.

Steve sighed and went on, picking his words carefully. "Look, Shellhead," he said, "I wasn't looking for a fight. It was nerve-wracking as hell trying to raise you and getting nothing but silence. NASA was asking for an update, and I had nothing to tell them. Or Jan. You hadn't come back with your pictures yet. Hell, for all I knew you'd gotten yourself killed, and having to tell Jan what the situation was..."

That... was a fair assessment, actually. In space it didn't take much for that to happen. Tony nodded slowly and almost grudgingly. "I can see why you might think that, but my comms were on."

Steve gave him a more thoughtful look, at that, relaxing now that he knew he was forgiven. Well, Tony admitted to himself, mostly forgiven, anyway. Considering the point for a bit, Steve asked, "so something was interfering with our communications?"

"Seems like it," Tony agreed. "But I have no idea what it could have been. Nothing physical. There were no obstructions between me and the jet, and even if there were, it would take a lot to block our comms that way. I didn't detect any kind of radio or microwave signals coming from the temple, but I also wasn't scanning for them." He suited actions to words, at that, and did the scan on the spot. "Huh. Okay, _that's_ weird. I'm not picking up any kind of signal in the area that could jam our communications."

"Magic?" Steve suggested.

Tony scowled. He hated magic; it made no damned sense and just ignored the laws of physics. "I hope not," he grumbled, "but it's possible. If we're going to investigate inside this rock, we'll have to let Wasp and NASA know about the potential comms blackout while we and the jet are in proximity to it, in that case."

"If?" Steve caught his eyes. "I thought that was the point of coming out here."

"If." Tony nodded. "Its orbit isn't stable, and if there's a chance it'll crash into the moon or go flying off into space while we're inside, that's not really a great situation to be in. I've got a lot of calculations to do before we can attempt that part of the mission." The realisation that crept across Steve's face was somewhere between satisfying and hilarious.

"Ah." Steve picked over the next words like a man trying to cross a stream without getting his boots wet. "Why don't you ask the boys at NASA? Give them something useful to do?"

Tony suddenly wanted to bang his head against the instrument panel. Why hadn't he thought of that? "I just might," he said after a beat. "Think you can handle sending Jan the photos and video from earlier?"

"Shouldn't be too hard, I'd think."

Pointing Steve at the cameras he'd left hanging from a convenient carabiner clip near the airlock, Tony settled in the pilot's seat once more and cued the comm link that would connect him to Avengers ground control. "Wasp?"

"Shellhead! Oh, thank goodness you're back on the line. We were worried!"

Tony winced. "Sorry about that," he replied. "We had an unexpected comms blackout. Something about that temple keeps transmissions jammed without actually using radio or microwave signals to do it."

"Hmph," Jan huffed at him, not entirely mollified. "Well, some warning would have been nice!"

"Listen, Wasp," Tony redirected the conversation, "we're about to transmit some photographic data home for NASA to play with, and then I need them to do some orbital calculations for me."

"Go on," Tony could still hear her irritation, but she followed his conversational gambit willingly enough, "what do you need?"

"The orbit this structure is in isn't staying very stable, and, yeah, we knew that was likely to happen even before we launched. But I need them to work out whether it's still stable enough for us to risk going in closer to get footage of the inside. It's hard to tell from here, but I think it's orbit might be decaying more than predicted."

\------

It had taken the NASA number crunchers the better part of an hour, but Tony now had independent confirmation that the temple's orbit was only meta-stable. It would hold, as long as they didn't bump into the structure, basically.

Tony looked back down at his own calculations, displayed on the interface he'd put on the interior of his faceplate, and sighed silently. They would have to be extremely careful with the way they tethered the jet, and also do their best to only minimally use the structure itself as a launching point for their movements. What they could do aboard the jet -- pushing off a wall to cross the cabin and stopping themselves by planting hands or feet on the far wall -- wouldn't work inside the temple.

This wasn't a huge problem for Tony, since he had his bootjets and repulsors for propulsion, but Steve would have to find a way of getting around that didn't involve the equivalent of crashing into the walls.

It took some discussion and some more calculations, but, in the end, they decided that Tony would suit up in the armour and gently tow the jet in close enough to tether it to the temple, since that allowed them to save the jet's fuel, and meant Tony could physically stop the jet, if need be, using his bootjets.

They would be using a break-away tether, which would snap once it was put under the correct amount of tensile load, to reduce the chance of damage to the jet or the temple, in the case that the temple's orbit decayed more or changed suddenly. It was a risk, with both of them away from the controls, but Tony was reasonably confident that his automated navigation systems would be up to the challenge. As long as their vector didn't change too much or too suddenly, the computers should be able to keep up.

The next few hours and check-ins passed quietly as they both made their preparations. Tony spent his time checking over the armour's seals and air supply. Steve kept watch over the jet while he did. Then they switched places, and Steve checked over his space suit.

They'd decided that since it was technically Steve's turn to go Outside, he would be the one to go set the anchor for the jet's tether, and Tony, as the better pilot anyway, would keep the jet steady while they got everything set up. The key would be to stop the jet relative to the temple, and do so at a position where there was enough slack in the tether to allow both the jet and the temple to move relative to one another without pulling the anchor point loose or triggering the breakaway clip set roughly in the middle of the length of high tension steel cabling. It would require a deft touch on the controls that Tony had and Steve was still working on honing.

Watching Steve step out of the airlock and into open space was vaguely nervewracking in and of itself. Sure, he'd notice any big air leaks while he was still inside the airlock, and any issues with his propulsion would become obvious before he got far, but it still sent a frisson down Tony's spine. Mankind was so delicate, and space was unforgiving.

Waiting for Steve to carefully make his way to the temple, one end of the cable in his left hand, was its own kind of unanticipated pain. Tony had to harshly throttle back the urge to check on him every few seconds, and mostly succeeded. He did hail Steve a few times, on the pretext of working out just how far out from the temple the jamming field extended, though. When Steve didn't respond, reaching a point about twenty meters from the surface of the structure, Tony nodded. So the threshold was somewhere between there and a hundred meters out. Once the jet was tethered, since the tether was only about twenty meters long, it would be well inside the jamming field. That might be worth knowing later.

"Wasp," Tony cued his comm, "we're not sure precisely how far the jamming field extends, but odds are good that the jet will be well inside it once everything's in place. Don't be surprised if contact cuts out entirely."

"Well," Hank replied in her place, "that's good to know, Iron Man. We'll have to test the difference in signal strength between the jet and your personal comms, though. The higher power output aboard the jet might be enough to get through."

"Roger that, Ant Man." Tony nodded, even though Hank couldn't see him. "I'll test it once the jet is tethered."

Everything was silent for the next few minutes, and Tony suspected that meant he had entered the jamming field with the jet. Steve turned to half face the jet as Tony carefully guided it closer, closing the distance until the jet was a mere fifteen meters from the surface of the temple. Bringing the jet's forward motion to a halt with the vernier jets mounted to the nose of the craft, Tony watched as Steve secured the end of the tether, looping it around the base of a pillar and clipping it to itself.

Steve looked right at him, then, and even through Avenjet windshield and the silvered space suit equivalent of mirrored sunglasses, it felt like their eyes met. "--ther secure... to jet."

Huh. So even inside the jamming field they had comm contact within a limited range. "Copy, Captain," Tony replied, "come on back."

Now that the jet was secured and the tether attached to the temple, they could regroup and plan their spacewalk into the interior of the structure. Tony planned to hand off at least one of the cameras to Steve for the duration. He didn't mind taking photos, but carrying multiple cameras was a very awkward thing to do.

What simultaneously felt like moments and an eternity later, Steve was back in the airlock chamber and it was cycling so that they could safely let him into the jet itself.

Somehow, they got through the planning without any more arguments -- though Steve had given him a couple of quelling looks that had made Tony bristle -- and now they were suiting back up to actually go carry out the critical portion of their mission. Their communications with Hank and the others had been very tough to understand and distorted, but they had eventually managed to get through. Enough to let the rest of the team know they were fine, anyway.

Engaging and checking the automated navigation systems hadn't taken more than a minute. Getting into their suits and checking the seals another five. The airlock chamber was only large enough for one of them at a time, though, so they had briefly squabbled over who would go through first. Steve had won, and was outside the jet now, waiting for him. Tony took a breath. Here went nothing.

\------

Somewhat to Tony's surprise they'd made it into the temple itself without mishap. They'd stationed the jet near what seemed to be the front door as they'd tethered it, and as a result, they'd been able to use Tony's bootjets to send them drifting gently away from its hull toward the temple. Steve, who'd wrapped one arm around Tony's waist and taken up the usual position they used when Tony carried him, held up his flashlight and shone it into the temple as they approached. The beam of light seemed to slice through the dimness like a scalpel, illuminating the colors of the wall fresco and making them seem to glow with their own inner light when Steve passed the flashlight over them.

"Now that's interesting," Steve muttered to himself, not bothering to try his comms. Tony could only hear him because they were touching. Steve hadn't been too shocked by the pictures of the pillars Tony had taken, and the murals themselves hadn't made him bat an eye, either, despite containing more orgiastic octopodes. 

Tearing his attention back to what he was supposed to be doing, Tony cleared his throat. "What is?" he prompted Steve, trying their radio link, since it seemed to be working for now.

Steve glanced at him and blinked for a moment, clearly trying to bring absentminded musing into focus. "It's hard to tell in this lighting, but I think those colors they used might glow in the dark."

Tony shifted so that he could take a closer look. He watched as Steve let the flashlight play over the wall again, in the opposite direction. "Huh." With a very short and very light bust of power to his repulsors, Tony brought the two of them closer to the wall, and watched the slight glow fade once the beam of the flashlight was gone. "Now that's something we should be trying to document. Hang on." Fumbling for one of the cameras he carried, Tony let Steve drift slightly apart from him.

Once he had it in his hands, Tony caught Steve's eyes. "Pick a spot you can find again for another run, then shine your flashlight at it for five seconds. On five, shut it off, and I'll start taking pictures. Once I've got the infrared and ultraviolet photos dealt with, I'd like you to do it one more time so I can capture it in visible light with the video camera."

"You got it." Steve held the flashlight's beam steady over a point on the wall where purplish, greenish and bluish tiles converged, and Tony nodded, pleased. That was a good choice. He took one photo of the area with the flashlight on, then prepared himself to very quickly take pictures and wind film. "And go," Steve said as he clicked the flashlight off.

In the sudden dimness, the glow coming from the wall seemed a lot brighter, all of a sudden. It lasted longer than he'd have expected, too, making Tony wonder whether the material could hold a charge, under the right conditions. Maybe the walls themselves had been used to light the temple while it had been in use. Setting aside his speculations for the moment, though, Tony focused on taking the pictures he needed of the wall, starting with the UV sensitive camera.

They repeated the procedure twice more with the remaining cameras, and then Tony turned toward the back of the room. He really wanted a closer look at that statue and the writing behind it. Steve followed his lead, and made a very surprised sound when the statue properly came into view. Tony carefully took pictures of it from a distance, so that the flashlight would illuminate the entire statue reasonably evenly.

"What... is that?" Steve sounded like he was caught between curiousity and disgust, as he stared up at the statue that seemed to tower over them from this angle. It hadn't been immediately obvious from outside the temple, but the statue itself was easily five meters tall, and the tentacles at the base spanned probably the same in diameter.

"No idea," Tony replied cheerfully. "My money's on some kind of love deity, though, judging by the literal orgy of octopodes they carved into the pillars."

"Uh." Steve seemed to swallow back some words he deemed ill-advised. "Right."

With a shrug, Tony went back to taking pictures, this time of the writing behind the statue. "This writing is bugging me," he told Steve. "It looks a _lot_ like some of the writing systems we have at home, but I can't place what it is."

"Maybe Thor would know," Steve suggested. "He has a lot of those weird facts and bits of knowledge stashed away."

Taking one last photo of the text Tony nodded. "Worth a shot. Otherwise we can send it over to the NASA analysts, I guess."

They didn't stay much longer before making their way back to the jet. They needed to recharge their air supplies and report back in to ground control. And, Tony made a mental note, they would need to bring their mass spectrometer sampling kits on their next foray into the temple, which would be taking place shortly after their morning conference with ground control the next day. Assuming they could get a clear connection, anyways. Otherwise, they would just transmit their check-in and wait an hour for a response. Those boxes he'd noticed on his first explorations each contained a sort of colored powder. There seemed to be three types, and Tony was really starting to wonder what they were. Not to mention, what they did.


	5. Day 4

Having sent their newest photos to Jan along with a request for Thor to have a look at the writing, they'd slept. Tony had taken the first watch, knowing he was too keyed up to sleep. Needing something to do that didn't involve checking the jet's instrumentation board or staring out into literal space waiting for the next check-in, he'd spent the time trying to independently decipher the writing on the temple wall. He didn't get very far, for all that it still seemed naggingly familiar. A few hours later, the report had come back: Thor wasn't familiar with the writing, and they had sent it off to NASA for further analysis.

They didn't hear back about the results of NASA's attempt to decipher the writing before Tony's watch was up. They still hadn't when Steve woke him in turn, the next morning.

Fortunately, he had a chance to satisfy his curiousity shortly afterwards. Thor had been the one on duty for their breakfast check-in, and he'd cheerfully shared the news. "Torment yourselves with this riddle no longer," he'd said, somehow managing to get his voice to come through clearly despite the poor connection, "for it has been solved. We shall transmit the translated text shortly. The scientists at NASA have determined it to be a mixture of two languages no longer spoken on Midgard: Ancient Greek and Aramaic."

Tony had to bite back a snicker as he thanked Thor and signed off to puzzle over the meaning of the translated text, inappropriately reminded of the Monty Python movie that had just come out[7]. His amusement didn't last long, though. Annoyingly, the translated text didn't clarify a damned thing.

_Partake of the fruits of the god's joy_ , it read, _and remain in peace until the tides have passed o'er thee, bathing thee with truth, love, and serenity._

Tony groaned. "What does that even mean," he grumbled.

Steve huffed. "Well, the temple itself seems to be magic, judging by the way it's blocking our comms just by existing, unless we're really close to one another. Maybe that's what it means by 'peace'?"

"Or maybe it's just Scriptural and has no bearing on the structure itself, or its purpose." Tony replied.

"I'm not so sure," Steve looked unconvinced.

\------

An hour later, as they suited up to venture back into the temple, Steve brought the topic of the writing on the wall again. "Shellhead," he said, "I've been thinking."

"About what?" Tony looked up at Steve as he bent to secure his jetboots.

"About that writing. What it means." Steve shrugged. "I know we can't really prove what it means one way or the other without having someone from their society to talk to and ask, but..."

"But what," Tony prompted when Steve hesitated.

"I don't--" Steve cut himself off and visibly searched for words for a moment. "It feels like it has more significance than just a bit of Scripture, somehow." Steve looked oddly unsure of himself as he said it. Like he wasn't sure of that himself and didn't have proof, but the hunch was strong enough to warrant voicing the thought.

Tony considered that. Gut instinct was a powerful thing, and not something to be dismissed out of hand. "Well, we have no evidence to discredit that theory, so I'll concede the point," he replied after a beat, "pending a more thorough investigation of the other things inside that temple. Such as those powders." 

Relief showing in his voice, Steve nodded and said, "good enough for me. Got your sampling kits, this time?"

Tony waved the box at him. "Got the flashlight?"

This time Tony got to go through the airlock first. He waited impatiently as the pumps pulled the air out of the small chamber and used the time to try to plan his approach for taking his samples. He had enough sealable airtight sample tubes that he could take three samples of each of the three powders. The problem was going to be getting the powders into the tubes without sending them flying. In microgravity, there were very good odds that those powders would coat his armour and Steve's space suit, and they didn't have a way to get that dust back off, once they were aboard the Avenjet. One thing he hadn't been able to include in the design was a decontamination chamber. For that matter, it was likely that the powders were fine enough to be invisible to the eye in small quantities, especially on a brightly colored surface like his armour.

A metallic thunk signaled Steve's exit from the jet as his hand came into contact with Tony's shoulder guard. "You ready, Shellhead?"

As he cued his bootjets to send them drifting gently toward the temple, Tony smirked at his teammate, knowing Steve would be able to hear it in his voice. "Winghead, I was born ready."

It was a relief to know that for now they seemed to have put their arguments behind them. Maybe, Tony told himself, just maybe, they would be able to maintain that status quo once they were back on terra firma. Of course, they still had several more days' worth of mission to get through first.

A silence built between them as they drifted neatly through the doors of the temple and Tony brought them to a stop near what he thought of as the altar. Steve let go of him, and pushed away gently. He stopped himself a meter or so away with the miniature vernier jets in his space suit's backpack. "Let's get to work, then."

Tony would have raised an eyebrow at him if he'd had his helmet off. "Aye aye, O Captain, my Captain."

"Smart alec."

Snickering at Steve's short response, Tony reached for his sampling kits. This would take some time, and once he was through taking the samples, the next step would be to get back to the jet and do a preliminary analysis on them. Opening the first kit, he pulled out a sterile spatula and the sealable glass tube.

Ever so slowly and gingerly, he brought the tube close to the surface of the powder that filled the box about to the halfway mark. Holding the tube above the powder, he gently used the spatula to dig into the powder, and lift some. When he stopped his motion, the powder floated gently free of the spatula and drifted up until it hit the bottom of the tube and stayed there. There was a little puff of powder, like you could see on a dusty path in the summer -- not that Tony had a lot of experience with that, but he remembered getting stuck in the desert that one time -- but the powder stayed in the tube. Breathing a mental sigh of relief, Tony repeated the gesture until his sample tube was half full, then did the same with the next box of powder. Sampling that one went off without a hitch, too. The last powder was bluish, and he realised belatedly that the others were also matches for the three colors used in the murals on the walls.

And -- Tony paused before sampling the last powder -- for that matter, now that he could see them in the illumination of the flashlight, it was clear that these murals were meant to complement the writing behind the statue. They seemed to depict a progression of states that was probably meant to be entering the temple, having a lot of sex, and then enjoying the afterglow.

"Hey, Cap," he called over the comm, "Get a snapshot of those murals, while you're at it. We didn't take one of the whole thing yesterday."

"Right."

Tony turned back to what he was doing and left Steve to it. He still needed to sample the blue powder. Pulling out the last sterile spatula and a fresh sample tube, Tony got to work.

"Hey, Shellhead," Steve hailed him halfway through filling the second sample tube. "Give me the cameras, and I'll take pictures with those, too."

Tony looked up as Steve drifted over towards him, and froze. Unless Steve was prepared to stop abruptly, they were going to collide. There wasn't time to put things down safely, either. Tony winced.

It felt like it happened in slow motion. Steve realised too late that he wouldn't be able to stop, tried anyway, and almost succeeded in his aim. What would have been a body check turned into a bumping of shoulders and hips, but it was enough. The powder in the sample tube sprayed out in a cloud of blue, and coated them both from neck to waist.

Tony wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose, and carefully bit back the words he could feel choking him. Damn it.

"Shellhead?" Steve sounded very sorry.

Tony sighed and did his best not to let it turn into a frustrated growl; he'd almost had it. "Well, take the cameras. We'll have to try to clean off the dust before we get back in the jet. We don't want to contaminate our whole air supply."

He could almost hear Steve's wince. "It might not even work on humans, if it even does anything?" he offered.

"I sure hope you're right." Tony handed him the cameras he'd come for. "Here. I'll finish this up."

\------

They paused outside the jet's airlock and dusted each other off as best they could. It was the only thing they could do, without access to a decontamination chamber. Tony wanted to groan. They'd have to hope that the jet's air filters could handle this stuff. They wouldn't be able to stay in their EVA suits for the whole rest of the trip without refilling their air supplies, and thus exposing themselves to the powder one way or another. They really could only hope like hell that Steve was right and this stuff was biologically inert, at least with respect to human biochemistry.

The results he'd gotten from his initial scan of the stuff, using the armour, had been inconclusive. Sure, there were organic molecules in it, but he couldn't determine their structure without the instrumentation on the jet. He needed mass spectrometry data to go along with the infra-red spectrometry data he'd collected with his armour, if he wanted to do a proper structural analysis. Which he'd have to if he wanted to work out what the compounds did.

It seemed like the airlock cycled more quickly now that he was reluctant to get aboard the jet, but there really was no other choice. Careful not to touch too many surfaces, Tony pushed off the wall beside the airlock door and made his way to the instrumentation room in what used to be the cargo hold of the Avenjet. Letting himself float above the floor, Tony set down the samples next to the instrument rack, and secured them with a convenient velcro strap.

Steve followed him into the room after stripping off his space suit. Something about the suit itself was off, though, and it took Tony a moment to place what it was -- the remaining smears of blue powder had disappeared somehow.

"Cap," he asked slowly, "what surfaces did you touch with that suit before you came in here?"

"Huh? None." Steve gave him a sharp look. "What are you trying to say?"

Well, at least they hadn't immediately gotten into a fight somehow. "We have no idea what that powder does, so we need to try to keep it off the walls and floor of the jet as much as possible," Tony elaborated. "Did you touch any? The blue smears on your suit are gone."

Steve raised an eyebrow at him, skeptical, but glanced down. "Oh. They _are_ gone. I didn't notice." Steve thought about the question for a moment, this time. "Didn't touch anything, though. You're looking a lot less blue, yourself, Shellhead."

"Well, that's not good." Tony looked down at his arms -- the forearm plates had been hit the hardest -- and was unsurprised to see that they looked pristine again. "Some chemical reaction with the air that breaks it down, maybe. We'll have to be careful doing the analysis."

With a mental shrug, Tony removed his helmet. He always felt less closed in when he took it off. He left the rest of his armour where it was, except his gauntlets. There wasn't much spare space in the instrumentation room, with all the bulky instruments NASA had lent them, but he would need to be able to type without risking destroying the keyboard.

It didn't take long for him to set up the first mass spectrometry experiment. All that was left was to load the sample into the machine. This required a larger amount of powder than had been on his suit, so Tony carefully opened one sample tube and tipped it to pour the blue powder out into the receptacle at the top of the machine.

It would take a few minutes to actually get the data, though, so Tony turned back to Steve once he had loaded the sample. "You don't have to stick around for this if you don't feel like it."

"I'd like to know what these things do. That seems like it might be pertinent information for the rest of our mission here," Steve replied.

"Fair point," Tony shrugged and acceded, "but it'll get pretty technical."

Steve snorted. "Better not, or I'll get annoyed." He paused after speaking that sentence, though, looking confused. "I didn't mean to say that," he added. "Tony, do you feel that?"

"Feel what?" Tony asked him, and then he realised that the room felt warmer all of a sudden.

Seeing the moment of realisation on Tony's face, Steve nodded. "The room feels like it's heating up."

"Pretty sure that's the instrument that's doing that," Tony replied. As he said it, though, he felt like something was trying to make him bite back the words and replace them with others. He _wasn't_ that sure. Not after the way the powder on their suits had seemed to vanish into thin air. And the urge to correct his statement was getting stronger with every moment.

"I'm not so sure," Steve shook his head. "And I feel... odd."

"Like you can't seem to control your words?" Tony offered, a sudden suspicion taking root in him.

"Like the words are trying to control me."

Nodding, Tony turned back to the instrument, and noted with dismay that there seemed to be a lot less powder in the analysis chamber than they'd started with, and the data that had been collected so far showed only a very weak signal-to-noise ratio. That was probably not good. But opening the machine to take the powder back out wasn't exactly an option. The thing was that they'd had their samples on pretty serious lock down until they attempted the analysis, and some instinct was telling Tony that that might have been the flaw in their planning. Sure, the instrumentation was in a compartment that was isolated from the rest of the jet, but they were both in the room, so any benefit they might have reaped from isolating the instrument room was nullified right off the bat.

"Well," Steve asked him, "what now? I'm at a loss."

Huh. That was the kind of thing Steve usually didn't like to admit. Something was definitely afoot here. And it seemed like the powders could affect them, after all. Was that powder the alien equivalent of booze? It definitely seemed to lower inhibitions, and possibly encourage them to say things they would normally keep under wraps.

"As long as we're in here, and under the influence," Tony asked slowly, "we might as well try to analyse all three powders. Are you okay with that?"

Steve swallowed back his knee-jerk response, making Tony wonder what it would have been, before he replied. "That's probably not a bad plan. We're more or less committed at this point. I don't like it, though."

"Well, the jet's air supply is contaminated with this powder anyway, and it seems to be more or less harmless. Maybe we should check in with the team before we attempt to work on the other ones," Tony suggested.

Steve nodded. "I'll do that," he offered, "if you'd rather keep working for now."

Taking that to mean that Steve wanted a moment alone, Tony nodded. "Go ahead."

The next powder Tony loaded into the machine -- the green one -- also didn't seem to have any real effect, though it reacted with the air like the first one, so Tony made a note of the weird behaviour, and tried the last sample, the purplish one. As he loaded it into the machine, Steve came back into the room and closed the door. "The rest of the team is up to date, and NASA says that the temple's orbit is still stable enough for a few more space walks," he announced.

Tony looked up and nodded as he closed the lid on the sample chamber, and waited. "Loading up the last sample now. The second didn't seem to do anything, even though it behaved like the blue powder."

Here went nothing.

It didn't take them long to notice that the purple powder had a definite effect. As the analysis run progressed, the room seemed to get hotter and hotter. Tony recognised the feeling of lust running through him once it started getting him hard in his armour, and swallowed hard. "Winghead," he rasped, "if you're not out of the room in the next few seconds, I'm going to try to kiss you."

_Shit._ That was _not_ what he'd meant to say.

"Get that armour off, Shellhead," was Steve's response, "and come here."

There was no escaping it. Tony knew that almost before his hands automatically went to the catches on his armour, hearing the note of command in Steve's voice. "Cap," he managed, "I have to know. Do you want this?"

Steve groaned, peeling his coveralls and bio monitors off. Pulling his comm away from his ear, he tossed the clothes to float in a corner, leaving him in nothing but a plain white pair of briefs that strained to contain him. His expression twisted oddly, in what seemed to be indecision, before he spoke. "Wanted this for a while," he admitted, off comms, and Tony suddenly envied him that level of privacy. "Wanted you, but didn't know how to get you."

Hearing that, Tony had to follow suit. He tossed his armour components after Steve's coveralls, yanking his own bio monitors free and trying not to let his mouth water too obviously at the sight of Steve's reaction to him.

Or at least, his reaction to the powder.

\------

[7] Yes, it's true. [Monty Python and the Holy Grail](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/) had indeed been released before this fic takes place. Click here to return to text.


	6. Day 5

For his part, Tony couldn't seem to keep his hands to himself. Then again, he also couldn't make himself care that this was entirely the wrong way to handle his attraction to Steve. Or that neither of them could properly consent. They really might as well be drunk.

But if this was the only way and the only time he could have Steve, he was going to seize the chance with both hands. He could sort out the morality once the drive to fuck Steve through a wall had been sated.

"Come here, Tony," came the predictable demand, laced with a hint of command. When Tony glanced up at him, Steve looked caught between anticipation and unease.

That was concerning. They might not be able to fully consent, but Tony didn't want him going into this feeling guilty or otherwise out of sorts. "You alright, Steve?" he asked quietly.

"I--" Steve hesitated. "Yes and no?" The words sounded almost like they were being pulled out of him. "This feels wrong, like you're forced into it, and I don't--"

Steve didn't continue, so Tony pushed off on the wall and let himself drift back over to Steve. He stopped himself using Steve's bodyweight to counterbalance his own, sending them into a slow spin, then forced Steve to meet his eyes. "Hey," he said, "yeah, I'm forced, but you are too. And if you missed it, I can't seem to say things that shade the truth too much."

That got a nod, albeit a slightly reluctant one. "I can't either," Steve admitted. "Alright, I'll go with it. Just for tonight, then."

And wasn't that a kick in the teeth. Yeah, Steve had confessed to wanting this for a while, but apparently all he wanted was a one-night-stand. Well, Tony could do that. But he didn't have to like it.

Shaking off the thoughts, he pulled Steve closer by the hips and rubbed against him suggestively, getting a reflexive thrust out of Steve as he did that sent them drifting to one side of the room. "So, what do you want?"

"You, bent over the table," Steve told him. It sounded like this, too, had been pulled out of him semi-willingly, but damn if the idea wasn't hot as hell.

The mental image sent a jolt through Tony, and he groaned. "Sure, I'm game." He'd imagined himself fucking Steve, but this would be just as good. Actually following through, though, would require a few intermediary steps. "Steve," he managed to get out, "two things. First, have you been tested?"

Steve gave him a long level look. "What for? I've been with no one since the serum, and that took care of the problem before it started, anyway. Can't get sick, remember?"

Fine, fair enough. Tony was starting to have trouble thinking clearly. "Second thing," he rasped out as Steve took the matters into his own hands and started working Tony free of his coveralls, "we’ll need lube. Thank fuck, I have some that should work. But do you know how to do this?"

"The concept isn't overly complicated, Tony," Steve pointed out, smirking at him, "but I wouldn't mind you talking me through it. Get your lube."

Pulling free of Steve's grip, albeit somewhat reluctantly, Tony pushed off of the edge of the lab bench and sent himself floating over to the parts of his armour still hanging in a corner of the room. Carefully stopping himself on the far wall of the room, he grabbed for his discarded hip plate, deftly opening the little hidden compartment inside it, and took out the little bottle of teflon lube he'd stashed in there before they'd started the mission. It was blood safe, so it should work for what he had in mind.

When he returned with the bottle clutched in his hands, anticipation running through him like electrical current and setting every hair on his arms on end, Tony was entirely unsurprised to have the lube snatched deftly out of his hand and Steve's other hand at his waist.

"God, Tony," Steve’s voice rumbled in his ear as Steve fitted them together from shoulders to hips, getting as much contact with Tony's bare skin as he could manage, "you feel fantastic."

Tony huffed and leaned forward over the lab bench to settle himself more or less comfortably with his hands around a pair of the velcro tie down straps for leverage. "Just wait till we get to the part where you fuck me. Come on. Lube up your fingers, doesn't matter which hand, and put one finger inside me. Slowly."

Steve did as instructed, and didn't wait for Tony to continue talking. That was probably for the best. Tony was too distracted by the feeling of the strong blunt fingers inside him, lighting up his nerves in a rush of brilliance that felt like it went all the way to his toes and fingertips. Somehow everything about this felt more intense than usual already, and Tony found a moment to wonder at that before Steve's fingers brushed against a sensitive spot and sent him reeling, his train of thought derailed so thoroughly it might as well have fallen off a cliff. "Fuck! Steve!" Tony groaned loudly, not caring that their comms might pick him up despite being across the room. After a long moment, he remembered that he was supposed to be giving Steve instructions. "Okay, good. Step one accomplished. Now you need to start stretching me," he found the coherence to add. "Spread those fingers, gently, a few times. Keep doing it until you can get a third finger in."

When Steve started slowly stretching him, Tony had to give up his grip on one of the tie down straps in favor of gripping the base of his cock to keep himself from losing it too soon. It left him drifting in the air of the room, suddenly unstable, but what Steve was doing with his strong fingers just felt too damn good for words. Part of that intensity was probably because of the sex dust, but Tony knew he had more than enough feelings for Steve to make up the difference.

Lost in his efforts to keep from coming before Steve was inside him, Tony barely noticed when he did actually add a third finger. Steve paused once he had followed those instructions, though, and Tony definitely noticed that. "Steve?"

Tony could hear the smirk in Steve's voice when he asked, tone teasing, "what's next?"

He had to get some of his own back for the teasing, and he knew just what he wanted to do to get it. Biting back a frustrated growl, Tony twisted at the waist to look Steve in the eyes, keeping his expression as deadly serious as he could under the circumstances despite knowing that Steve wasn't likely to be fooled, and replied levelly. "Next, you take those fingers out of me and lube yourself up. Then you get your cock in me and stay there as long as you can stand while I adjust." 

Steve snickered but did as Tony asked. Tony saw him snatch up the bottle of lube from its position floating beside them, and squeeze some onto his hand. Carefully recapping the bottle with a level of focus that surprised Tony, Steve caught his eyes again and held them as he brought his hand down to his own cock. Jerking himself off for a moment as he stared down Tony. Fuck that was hot. Tony felt his cock twitch in his hand, at the thought, and groaned.

"Get inside me, now," Tony demanded. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take. Luckily for his sanity, Steve obliged. Tony could tell Steve wanted this almost as much as he did.

Threading his arm between Tony's arm and torso Steve wrapped a hand around the ball of Tony's shoulder for leverage and lined himself up. Tony couldn't help the way his back arched when Steve pushed in, gently but inexorably. It took a bit of effort, despite how well prepared Tony was. Steve was big, and that extended to his cock as well as the rest of him.

Steve had to hold him still, and the strength that move showed off sent a jolt up Tony's spine alongside the slight hurt of the stretch of the penetration. Next time he would insist on four fingers, he told himself, ignoring the high likelihood that there wouldn't be a next time. Once he'd gotten used to the idea of keeping it casual, once he'd recovered from the heartbreak, he could try to persuade Steve to have another go.

What felt like an eternity later, Steve was fully seated, his cock hitting all the right points deep inside, and Tony reveled in the sensation. It felt amazing. Steve was just the right length for the head of his cock to rub against Tony's prostate on every thrust and that was going to end this way too soon if Tony wasn't careful.

Steve used his grip on Tony to plaster them together while he waited for Tony to give the go-ahead. "You weren't kidding," he breathed into Tony's ear, sounding oddly reverent. "This is definitely better."

Making an amused sound, Tony adjusted his grip on the velcro strap he was using to keep them anchored so that it cut into his palm less and focused. Now it was his turn to tease a bit. Knowing that he would be gradually relaxing around Steve, he waited a few seconds. Once the worst of the stretch had subsided, he smirked to himself, and squeezed down around Steve. It let him feel every inch, and got a wonderful string of obscenities out of Steve.

"Tony," he gritted out between his teeth, "don't do that."

"What," Tony laughed at him and relaxed his muscles a little, "not good?"

Ducking his head Steve briefly set his teeth in the nape of Tony's neck, before he replied. "Too good."

Oh, this was too much fun. Wanting to see what would happen, Tony repeated the move. Steve growled and straightened up, deciding that was enough teasing. Tony would have pouted at him, but Steve followed that tactical withdrawal by pulling out until only the head of his cock was inside Tony. He paused there, poised on the knife's edge and trembling with the control it took. "Ready?"

That word alone was enough to snap the control Tony had been exerting to keep enough coherent thought to tease with. "Fuck, yes, Steve, do it!"

"Yeah."

Steve slammed home, sending them jerking forward against the strap Tony was holding. It cut into his palm again, but Tony never noticed, too focused on the jolt of pleasure that movement had sent through him. Steve pulled back immediately, dragging out the motion until Tony was trying to thrust back against him, then set a slow but uneven pace, movements harsh enough to send them drifting forward to jerk to a halt against the velcro of Tony's anchor point each time. It was driving Tony wild, not being able to tell quite when the next thrust would come, making him anticipate and making each movement all the more intense. "Steve," he whined, "I need more. Come on, harder."

Rather than respond verbally, Steve put a little bit more force into his movements. It sent them jerking to the end of their tether again, and this time, it tore loose. Tony yelped and tensed, bracing his arms to keep them from hitting the wall above the lab bench. He managed it, but their momentum sent them drifting up into the open air in the middle of the room.

The change had made Tony tighten up in surprise and that was enough to send Steve over the knife's edge. Just the knowledge was enough to send Tony after him; the tattered remains of his control evaporated and he used the hand he'd been using to hold himself back to jerk himself until he came, too. Steve's grip on Tony had gone vice like as he hit his climax, and Tony just knew he would have a few bruises later.

"Tony," Steve's voice sounded broken and hoarse, as he gasped for air in the aftermath, "that was--"

"Fan-fucking-tastic," Tony filled in, also still somewhat breathless, when Steve groped for a suitable adjective.

He made a face when he noticed the droplets of come floating through the air near his head. He had no leverage to get to the shelf of supplies next to the lab bench, though, and didn't want to move, anyway. He still had Steve's half hard cock deep inside and it still felt nice. "Hey," he nudged Steve, who seemed content to just drift as he recovered, "can you reach the box of wipes?"

For the moment, he didn't feel consumed by the need that had he'd felt earlier. That undeniable drive to fuck or be fucked. Maybe it was over and they could untangle themselves and clean up. Well, he amended the thought, they could untangle themselves if Steve allowed it. The position they were in left Tony without a lot of leverage, especially now that his anchor point was gone.

Having a moment to gather his thoughts would be welcome, though.

Steve chose that moment to nose at Tony's nape and tuck himself close again, the box of wipes in his hand. "Here," he said, breaking into Tony's thoughts and reminding him of the task at hand.

"Thanks." Tony took the still-new box and tore it open, leaving the cardboard attached at one end of its perforation so he wouldn't have to chase down the scrap later. Pulling out a pair of wipes, he scooped the come out of the air and then realised he had nowhere to dispose of the mess.

Steve took the box back out of his hands and put it next to the bottle of lube still floating near the middle of the room. He leaned back and managed to get a hold on the side of the shelves he'd taken the wipes from, maneuvering them back over to the lab bench they'd started out at. Tony took the chance to hastily put the now-dirty wipes into the waste container secured to one corner of the lab bench.

Rather than disengage as Tony half suspected he would, though, Steve shifted just slightly. "Tony?"

The movement drew Tony's attention to the fact that Steve was getting hard again. Tony twisted in Steve's grip to raise an eyebrow at him and got a hint of a blush in response. "Sorry?"

Tony snorted. "You always recover that quickly?"

"Since the serum, yeah," Steve admitted, his face flushing darker.

And damned if that didn't send a flash of heat through Tony that made him forget all his thoughts of the consequences of their discovery about the effects of the powders in favor of another round of sex. Knowing he'd be sore as hell if he let Steve stay where he was, Tony turned to him. "I'm not sure I can take another round just yet," he said, the words feeling half-dragged out of him. He hated showing weakness in front of Steve. "Pull out and let's get cleaned up. I want to suck you off."

Steve didn't seem to notice his admission, this time. Carefully, gently, he used the leverage he had to work himself free. Tony hissed quietly as the head of his cock popped out, knowing he'd feel the aftereffects of the lack of prep later. For now, though, he didn't much care.

Rather than let Tony just slither down the length of his body, Steve wrapped his arms around Tony's waist and pulled him in close once they were face to face. Tony went with it, baffled but happy to soak in the contact.

It took a while before Steve was willing to let him go, and by then Tony was also starting to feel the first stirrings of arousal again. Huh. Seemed that the powder was also good for reducing recovery time. Just not as good as the serum Steve had running through his veins. In that moment, Tony selfishly wished he could take the whole box of that purple powder home with him, and tell no one. He didn't say a word about it, though, choosing to just rub the length of his body against Steve's and enjoy the sensual feeling of bare skin against his.

Steve was clearly also in no hurry at the moment. It worked out.

They seemed to be as synched up in bed as they ever had been on the battlefield, and Tony was kind of loving that. They didn't have to speak to read one another's needs and could guess one another's wants as easily. It was almost like physically snapping a pressure-fit part into place and having it fit perfectly the first time. Effortless in a way none of Tony's previous relationships had ever been, not even the one with Bethany.

After a few more long moments, they separated, somewhat reluctantly. Steve was fully hard again, ready for another round, but Tony himself wasn't, as he'd suspected might be the case. He caught Steve's eyes and reached for two of the individually wrapped alcohol wipes sitting in a dispenser on the lab bench. "Here," he said, holding one out to Steve, "clean yourself up, or I'm not putting your cock in my mouth."

Steve snorted, and shook his head in mock disappointment at the words. "You are something else, Shellhead," he said mock-solemnly.

Tony eyed Steve for a few seconds as he took the wipe and opened it, the strong smell of rubbing alcohol flooding the room and hitting them both like a brick between the eyes. Steve made a face and hurriedly made use of the wipe to clean himself up, then shoved it into the waste bin the moment he was through. Tony followed suit. It took a little while for the smell to dissipate, dealt with rather more slowly that Tony would have expected by the air filters in the room, but they were both clean.

Clean enough to continue the fun, at least. Steve was more-or-less patiently watching him, apparently content to wait him out for the moment. Taking a moment to consider the logistics, both of what he wanted and of the position he would need to get them into, Tony caught Steve's eyes and smirked. "Ready for more? I want that cock of yours in my mouth."

Steve shuddered and said cock twitched. "You sure?"

Without a word, Tony reached out to push off the ceiling, sending himself drifting gently downwards until he could lock his legs around one of the empty instrument mounts. It wasn't the most comfortable anchor point, but it would do. They wouldn't be moving around too much for this. "Come here, Winghead," Tony invited when he was stable.

Once Steve was close enough, Tony grabbed for his hips and steadied him. It forced him to twist at the waist and readjust the position of his legs to compensate. Steve caught himself on the wall with one hand and stopped their momentum carefully.

The view was making Tony's mouth water, but he paused long enough to ask, "you going to want one more round after this, or will I have to take care of myself?"

Steve bit his lip, the expression on his face unfairly hot, and groaned. "You can't just _say_ things like that," he complained.

"Sure I can," Tony shot back, enjoying himself a little too much, "and you love it. But that doesn't answer the question."

The query got him a shrug and a "probably?" so Tony grinned and gave in to the urge to taste Steve. He leaned in, pulling Steve towards him, opened his mouth, and let their momentum do the rest. Steve made a sound halfway between a gasp and a whimper at the sensation, and Tony moaned, letting the sound resonate deep in his chest as the taste of salt and musk exploded over his tongue. 

Steve all but wrapped himself around him as Tony started working his cock deeper into his mouth, experimenting with suction and pressure to work out what Steve liked best. For a while the room was silent but for the encouraging sounds Steve was making. It took him a few breaths to work up the coherence to speak. "Tony," he managed, sounding half-strangled, "I'm not gonna last long if you keep that up."

Well, that wouldn't do. Tony decided, backing off a little. He didn't let Steve out of his mouth, though, keeping the head between his lips and teasing at it with the tip of his tongue at irregular intervals. The tension in Steve's muscles slowly unwound and he stopped gasping for air, as the next couple of minutes passed, and Tony watched carefully as Steve came back down from the edge, soaking in the sight. If this was going to be a casual one-night-stand, he wanted to burn it into his memory.

Suddenly approaching the limits of his own patience, Tony slid his hands away from Steve's hips until he had two handfuls of that delightful ass, and pulled Steve sharply forward until the head of his cock hit the back of Tony's throat. The move got him a startled but pleasured shout, and Tony had to fight not to snicker. He was starting to feel his own interest picking back up, now, his cock hardening by degrees as he enjoyed the taste and feeling of having Steve deep in his mouth and leaking pre-come everywhere. If he concentrated, he could feel the throb of Steve's cock against his lips, and damn if that wasn't hot as hell.

Settling Steve's cock against the back of his throat more firmly and adjusting the angle, Tony took a breath before he caught Steve's eyes and used his grip to take him in deeper, relaxing his throat and riding out the reflexive rejection until he could sink down Steve's cock and bury his nose in the thatch of dark blond curls at the base.

"Oh! Tony," Steve groaned loudly but didn't move, clearly trying not to hurt him, and Tony could feel the slight trembles running through Steve with the effort that took. All Tony could think about in that moment, feeling Steve shake in his hands, was breaking that iron control. Deep-throating Steve until he lost all semblance of coherent thought. The mental image sent a sharp shock of arousal through Tony that made his cock twitch and reminded him that he was hard again.

Pulling back a few centimeters and holding the position for a few heartbeats, Tony swallowed around the cock in his mouth a couple of times. It made Steve's legs jerk in an instinctive attempt to find leverage to thrust, and Steve's hands buried themselves in his hair. 

Tony let it happen, enjoying the slight tugs on his hair and Steve's twitches. He used his grip to pull Steve back in again, taking him in deep, and reveling in the sound that pulled out of Steve.

He was starting to get a bit short of breath now, and it was sending tingles down his spine, was making his head go pleasantly fuzzy. Tony redoubled his efforts to get Steve to come, using his hands to tease at the sensitive skin of Steve's inner thighs before taking advantage of the access the position gave him to press at the skin behind Steve's balls.

With a choked call of Tony's name, Steve came. It seemed to last longer than the first time, and Tony's head was swimming pleasantly by the time Steve finished and gingerly pulled away, leery of catching himself on Tony's teeth.

Steve's hands were still tangled in Tony's hair, and he held himself at arm's length for a long moment, doing his best to regulate his breathing. Tony simply allowed it. Watching Steve and waiting for him to make some kind of sign that he was ready to continue.

"Tony," Steve said after a long minute, "that was great. But --"

Tony waited a moment to see what he would say, and prompted him to keep talking when the silence drew out. "But what?"

"But I want to try it the other way around," Steve muttered, his tone hinting that the words were being dragged out of him.

Tony puzzled over that for a moment. "Meaning," he asked, "that you want me to get inside you and make you come?"

Steve flushed bright red but nodded. "I want to--" he coughed to clear his throat, and Tony gleefully noted that the blush was starting to spread down his neck to his chest, "--to use those Velcro straps to tie you to the table and --"

Tony had to bite the inside of his cheek, hard, to keep from letting those words go straight to his cock and make him come. He came close to drawing blood when Steve went on after a long awkward pause, "--and get myself off at least once before I let you come."

Tony was hard pressed to resist the urge to fling himself bodily at Steve. Only the sure knowledge that that would end in injuries to one or both of them as well as damage to the instruments in the room stopped him. "You might have to hold me back," Tony admitted, once he felt he could do it without just begging Steve to get started with acting out that little fantasy. "Or I might come the moment you touch my cock."

Steve smirked at him, seeming to suddenly find his equilibrium again now that his wishes were out in the open. Then again, it probably helped that Tony was turned on by the idea. Steve went on after a beat. "Pretty sure I can figure something out," he said, and hooked his arms under Tony's. Lifting Tony level with him, Steve pulled him close, and plastered them together from chest to knees. Tony didn't protest; he liked feeling bare skin against his own. That was something that happened infrequently, these days, and he'd missed it.

When Steve manhandled him over to the lab bench and loosely secured his ankles, though, Tony couldn't stop himself from taking advantage of the leverage it gave him to try to thrust up and rub himself against Steve. He failed, finding nothing but air, because Steve had already moved to slide up until he could gather up Tony's hands in his own and strap them down, one by one, as well. The ties were secured loosely enough that he could just slip his hands back out, if he wanted, but having the Velcro to hold onto would make it easier to keep himself stable, and give Steve a potential handhold as well.

Finished working the Velcro, Steve turned away, and started rummaging through the supplies in the repairs drawer off to the left of the lab table, next to Tony's feet. Tony didn't bother craning his neck to see what Steve was doing. He knew the contents of that drawer almost by heart, and there was nothing dangerous in there.

When Steve made a triumphant sound and turned to Tony with a rubber o-ring in his hand, though, testing the elasticity of the thing, Tony started re-evaluating his assessment of those supplies. And of Steve. 

"What do you intend to use that for?" Tony asked, eyeing Steve with a mixture of lust and wariness rolling through him.

"Well," Steve replied, maneuvering himself to hang in the air suspended an arm's length above Tony, "I might not have my hands free when I need to hold you back from coming. This should work."

The man was showing more creativity with the supplies at hand than Tony had expected. He wasn't quite sure what to think about that, but it was hot, and using an o-ring as a cockring ought to be safe enough as long as they were careful. He hadn't expected Steve to know what a cock ring was, either, and that he did was somewhere between hot and jealousy-inducing, what with the thoughts it inspired about just how Steve had learned about that. Watching Steve closely, Tony nodded. "Do it. Want me to open you up?"

Steve considered that for a second, then nodded as he reached for the lube. "If you make me come, though," he warned, "I'm making you wait until I'm ready again before we do anything else."

That was-- Tony had to screw his eyes shut against the mental image of opening Steve up with his fingers until Steve was coming all over his chest. Jesus.

Before he had his control back, Steve's hands were on him, sliding the improvised cockring on him and making sure it was firmly seated at the base of his cock. The feeling pulled a shuddering gasp out of Tony and all but made him writhe in the restraints, allowing himself to pull against the velcro since it wouldn't send them flying across the room, while he was anchored.

Steve leaned back and eyed him critically after he had calmed again somewhat. "Am I going to have to find a way to strap you down more securely? If you keep thrashing like that you'll rip these out of the table, too."

Tony whined at him, the idea fanning the flames of his lust higher. "Maybe another time," he choked out between his teeth. "Right now, I just want you to come here so I can open you up."

Steve had the gall to laugh at him as he grabbed for the lube still floating in the air within reach and opened it. "Give me your hand, then, and a rubber if you have one."

Tony stared up at him in confusion, waiting for the request to make sense. They didn't need a rubber. What the hell did Steve want-- oh. It wasn't for Tony. Steve wanted to keep the mess he made contained before it became an issue. That Steve could still think that clearly even under the effects of the sex powder was more of a turn on than Tony had expected it to be. "Try the survival kit we keep for those unscheduled trips to the Savage Land," Tony suggested, not quite able to keep a straight face. "There should be a couple in there."

He'd have to remember to restock it later. And maybe make sure there were more rubbers in the kit, this time.

With a nod, Steve pushed off the lab bench and disappeared from sight for a moment as he opened the lockers at the back of the room and sorted through them, looking for said kit. When he found it, Tony heard him rummage through it, pulled out two rubbers, and shove the kit back into the locker without bothering to close it. They'd have a mess to clean up later, but it was contained by the locker for the moment and Tony didn't care a whit about that right now. It was enough that the contents of the kit weren't drifting around the room, loose.

Steve didn't waste much time after that. He quickly made his way back over to join Tony, the rubbers in his hand, and snatched the lube out if the air as he floated past it. Bringing himself to a stop with the hand that held the lube, Steve paused for a moment, poised over Tony, before the tableau broke.

Watching Steve put the condom on himself was enough to strain Tony's control again, and he felt his hands clench involuntarily around the makeshift Velcro restraints. Kept voluntarily out of his reach, he could feel his heartbeat throb in his cock, the sensation heightened by the improvised cockring. It took him more effort than expected before he could get his hands to open, and, when he did, Steve was ready and watching him with a vaguely amused mien.

"Tony?" Steve's left hand came down and coaxed Tony's right hand back out of the Velcro strap. "Tony, come on," he said voice low and rough with lust, "I want your fingers in me."

Steve seemed to be getting increasingly comfortable with the idea of asking for what he wanted, and that in and of itself was hot. Not bothering to hold back the needy whine that statement dragged out of him, Tony held out his hand so Steve could put some lube on his fingers. Steve caught his eyes as he did so, and Tony felt a frisson run up his spine at the sight. Steve's eyes were dilated so wide the irises barely showed, making them look like dark pools, ringed in blued steel.

It was getting increasingly difficult to hold himself back, and Tony found himself thankful for Steve's creative use of lab supplies. He had to take a couple of long breaths to claw back his control. He reopened his eyes, not knowing when he'd closed them, and startled when he saw that Steve had closed the distance between them until they were nose-to-nose.

Before Tony could find the words to say, Steve leaned in those last few centimeters and kissed him deeply. Tony's tied hand jerked against the restraint, and his free hand groped for a grip on Steve's hip, only to slip instead. After a dazed moment, Tony remembered that he had lube on his fingers that he should be putting to better use, and slid his hand lower, to brush against Steve's opening.

The feeling made Steve's hips jerk, and the motion brought Steve's skin into contact with Tony's, and drew twin sounds of mingled want and impatience out of them. Steve took a shuddering, hitching breath. "Tony," he managed, "do it. I need more. Want you."

Taking the demand for what it was, Tony nodded and started carefully working a fingertip into Steve. The action resulted in a shiver that ran all the way up Steve's spine and goaded him to kiss Tony again.

It seemed like mere seconds later that Steve growled something indistinguishable under his breath, then reached back to grab Tony's wrist and push Tony's finger deeper. "I'm not gonna break, Shellhead," he said.

Giving in, Tony began working his finger deeper, pushing gently at the muscle, and trying to find Steve's sensitive spots. When Steve relaxed Tony added a second finger, stopping at the first knuckle to let Steve adjust. Steve squirmed, pretty clearly unsure whether he liked that sensation, and Tony was struck by the sudden suspicion that Steve hadn't ever done this before.

Rather than ask, though, Tony decided to focus on the task at hand. Slipping his fingers back out and ignoring Steve's protests, he caught Steve's eyes. "I need more lube."

Under other circumstances Tony might have snickered at the reaction that got him. Steve fumbled in the air for a moment, his movements surprisingly clumsy, before he focused enough to find the lube bottle. When he did, he squirted a generous amount onto Tony's fingers, and his own.

Tony went back to what he'd been doing, trying not to think too hard about the wet heat and slickness, lest he lose his grip on his control again. He slid two fingers back into Steve, and did his best not to listen to Steve's own pleading whine. When he found Steve's prostate, he got a jerky motion out of Steve that almost qualified as a jackknife. Adding a third finger goaded Steve into motion, and Tony had to bite his lip to keep the visual of Steve fucking himself on the fingers buried inside him from pushing him too close to the edge. At this rate he was going to come despite the cockring holding him in check.

Steve stopped moving, though it clearly cost him a lot of effort to do so, and reached up to cup his lube-free hand around Tony's jaw. "Tony, hey, Tony," he called, "you with me?"

Heaving in a gasping breath, Tony realized that he'd been talking this whole time, with no idea what had come out of his mouth. It bothered him far less than it should have, but he couldn't muster the energy to care right now. All of him was crying out for Steve to get a move on.

"Tony?"

Right. Steve wanted an answer. It took him a moment to gather his scattered wits enough to nod. "Yeah, but if you don't stop finger fucking yourself on my hand I might come before you ride me."

Steve snickered at him. "Guess we can't have that," he quipped, and disengaged ever so slowly. Savouring every millimeter, judging by the way his eyes fluttered shut. "You probably need a minute," he smirked, eyeing Tony's cock, "but I want to come."

And damned if those words didn't make Tony's cock twitch. There was a drop of pre-come slowly rolling down its side, and Steve's hand was still wrapped firmly around the hand he'd been riding. "Steve," Tony whined, at a loss for more words.

Reaching out to re-secure Tony's hand with the velcro strap, loosely as before, Steve brought one hand down to steady Tony's cock. He swiped up the drop of pre-come with the forefinger of the other and brought it to his mouth. With a thoughtful sound that resonated in his chest, he licked at his finger. "Hm. That's different."

Tony could only stare in what approximated awe. Steve had just done that. Moral, upright, always-does-what's-right Steve. And had seemed to enjoy it.

Steve also seemed to guess what he was thinking. "Nothing to say, Tony?" he teased.

"Not really, no," Tony managed, feeling like he was edging back away from a precipice. "What're you gonna do?"

"Haven't decided yet," Steve caught his eyes as he hooked his feet under Tony's knees for leverage, and grinned, "but I thought you might have a suggestion locked in that brain of yours."

Well, shit. Was he asking Tony to give orders? Tony stared up at him blankly for a long moment, then forced his tongue to unstick itself from the roof of his mouth. 

"Show me what you like," he managed to rasp out, and had to clear his throat before he could continue speaking. "Show me how you like to get yourself off. You like to tease and touch until you're shaking with the effort of holding back? Or just go for it, and jerk yourself until you're hard? Or," he asked, "maybe you prefer to do it with the help of a few toys?"

Steve bit his lip, and his hands started moving as Tony rambled.

"Do you have a favourite fantasy?" Tony couldn't tear his eyes away from those strong, broad hands as they travelled down Steve's neck and ran nimbly across the planes of his chest. "I'll bet you do," he went on. "Something you've never told anyone, something deep and dark and secret."

Steve stayed silent and his hands lingered for a second as they skated over those lovely abdominals, then hesitated before he wrapped them around his cock. 

Not sure what that hesitation meant, but willing to ignore it since Steve didn't seem to be in any kind of distress, Tony kept speaking. "Bet you had at least one about your favourite film star, back in the day," he said, feeling his control come seeping back even with the temptation Steve was providing as he teased himself. "But who do you think about now, I wonder. Someone that does it for you every time," he mused, watching raptly as Steve bit his lip in an attempt to keep his moans behind his teeth. "Someone you admire."

It didn't work well. His hands were working his cock fast and hard now, one lingering at the head and the other at the base. "Tony," he groaned, "close."

"Let go," Tony asked him, "go on. Come for me. Show me that gorgeous look again."

"Tony! Oh," Steve stilled in his movements, tensing hard, and Tony could see the moment he fell over the knife's edge and into orgasm. 

When Steve slumped forward, his breath coming hard, and he leaned in to kiss Tony breathless. "Where did you ever learn to talk like that?" he breathed. "The mouth on you!"

"I'm not known as an international playboy for nothing," he reminded Steve. "I've had plenty of relationships."

"Those have nothing to do with learning how to talk like that," Steve pointed out, and rightly so. But Tony wasn't about to cop to his own fantasies. Not right now. And maybe not ever.

Casual, Tony reminded himself. Keep it casual. "Maybe not," he agreed. "But I've had plenty of chances to practice."

Steve gave him a long level look, clearly not believing a word, but didn't pursue the point.

Grateful for the reprieve, Tony drew Steve's attention back to the matter at hand, thrusting up and rubbing his cock against the crack of Steve's ass. It was a very broad hint, and they both knew it for what it was.

Steve gave him a measuring stare. "You ready for more?"

"Are you kidding?" Tony raised an eyebrow at him. "I've been looking forward to this for the last half hour."

The outrageous statement got him a fondly indulgent look. "You're exaggerating. It's been ten minutes."

"Ten minutes I've spent aching for you," Tony riposted, just to see what happened.

He got Steve to roll his eyes, but that reaction paled in comparison to Steve's next move. In a show of his ridiculous strength and endurance, Steve raised himself up, using the grip he had on Tony's hips with his knees, and leaned forward until he could line himself up with a hand on Tony's cock, and sink down until Tony was fully sheathed.

The sudden warm wetness wrapping around him made Tony jerk hard against the makeshift restraints, overwhelmed by the sensation and tightness. When Steve bottomed out and stayed there, not moving, Tony could only stare at him wide eyed and amazed. The satisfied sigh that Steve made when he had adjusted to the stretch was gratifying.

Steve stayed right where he was for a long minute, the twitches of his muscles around Tony just on the right side of enough to satisfy rather than tease. Tony was silently grateful for that. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.

"Tony," Steve called, trying to get his attention. "Tony?"

"Steve," he responded, dimly realizing that he'd been babbling again, and, as before, had no idea what he'd said, "Steve, I need you to move." 

"Gonna let me ride you until I'm hard again?" Steve asked, suiting actions to words and using the leverage he had to raise himself up achingly slowly. "I'm sure you have your fantasies, too, Shellhead." Steve reached behind himself to brace his hands on Tony's knees, as he spoke. "Gonna tell me what they are?"

"My lips are sealed," Tony shot back, trying his damnedest not to let Steve pry the answer out of him. He couldn't seem to find the words to spin a convincing half-truth, though, and whether that was because of the sex dust or not, he had no idea.

He also didn't much care, at this point. He had Steve hanging weightlessly over him and using nothing more than strength to ride his cock, and intended to enjoy every moment.

Steve did nothing more than flex, tortuously slowly sliding back down said cock, ignoring Tony's attempts to hurry him with a smirk. "You know," he said mock-thoughtfully, "given the position you're in, I could just keep you here and ride you until you're far enough gone to tell me."

Well, fuck. Wasn't that a mental image. "You're welcome to try," Tony replied, knowing full well that Steve was likely to take up that challenge.

Steve raised an eyebrow at him, skeptical, then used the leverage he had to suddenly thrust Tony's cock deep inside him. "Maybe I will."

While Tony panted through clenched teeth at the sensation, Steve stared down at him clearly very satisfied with himself. A glance down, away from Steve's face revealed that Steve was getting hard again. "Already? You're just incredible," Tony blurted out.

"I'll take that as a compliment." Steve's hands shifted away from Tony's knees and settled at his hips instead, as Steve leaned forward to kiss him again.

Letting himself enjoy the kiss, Tony relaxed into it and groaned when Steve deepened it until it seemed like he was trying to fuck Tony's mouth with his tongue, to claim him at both ends. It took a while for the kiss to break, but the change didn't grant Tony any respite for all that he could breathe properly again. Steve immediately pushed himself more or less upright and started moving with a long rolling rhythm that did more to tease than satisfy.

Wanting more, Tony tried to find a way to get it, arching his back fruitlessly, in an attempt to drive deeper into Steve. He'd forgotten that Steve had the leverage in this position, though. All he did was send himself drifting off the surface of the lab bench to jerk to a halt at the end of his short tether.

"Come on, then," Steve taunted him with a grin, using his grip on Tony's hips to pull back until only the tip of Tony's cock was still inside and stop moving, "show me what you've got."

With an inarticulate whine, Tony tried again, with similar results. Unless he was willing to take his hands out of their restraints -- which was hot, and therefore, no, he wasn't -- he was at Steve's mercy.

Adjusting the angle of his movements slightly and pulling Tony back in, abruptly, Steve groaned loudly. "You feel fantastic, you know," he commented, finally sounding slightly breathless himself. "Think you can hold off long enough to make me come twice?"

Jesus, this just might kill him, but he would die happy. Tony took a hitching breath. "Probably not," he admitted, "but try it."

Given free rein, Steve took the opportunity to effectively treat him like a sex toy. After another few sharp thrusts, he tensed hard, making Tony's teeth and hands clench, and came again with a pleased sigh. The feeling of Steve's muscles twitching and rippling around him as Steve came down from the high was pushing him closer and closer to the edge himself. Tony ground himself against Steve, trying to get more and not caring whether he got an inch or a hundred, so long as he was _deeper_.

Steve's hand came down to wrap around the base of Tony's dick, gently but firmly; it was more effective than the cockring, pulling him back from the brink and brooking no refusal. "Tony," Steve's other hand came down and trailed across his face. It came away damp, and Tony came back to himself enough to try to blink his eyes clear.

"You alright?" Steve looked concerned.

"'M fine," Tony's tongue felt clumsy. "'M good." Taking a deep breath and holding it for a few seconds, he met Steve's eyes again, trying to drive home his point. "But if you don't let me come soon I might lose my mind."

Huffing at him, Steve rearranged himself, so that he could drape himself bodily over Tony, putting as much of their bare skin into contact as he could manage without disengaging and letting Tony's cock slip out of him. "Think you can hold out long enough for one more round?"

Tony thought about it. He'd managed to regain a lot of his composure but that'd be pushing it. Shaking his head, he bit back a keening whine. "Gotta take the ring off. Not meant to be used for long periods of time."

Steve resisted that. "I like having you in me like this."

Tony just knew he'd never be able to say no to that tone of voice. It fell somewhere between pleased and petulant, and hearing it come from Steve...

Forcing his thoughts back in order, Tony arched his back. It pulled him out of Steve just the slightest bit, and turned the movement into a lazy thrust when he relaxed again. Steve sighed, enjoying the feeling, and then picked himself up, using his grip on Tony's waist to push himself upright. "So what did you have in mind, then?"

Relieved that Steve wasn't going to press the issue, Tony drew a long breath. "We have all kinds of options. I have no problem letting you fuck my mouth again," Tony offered. "Or my legs."

Steve gave him a skeptical look. "Your legs?"

"Yeah," Tony smirked at him before he started explaining what he meant, careful to be very blunt just to he could see Steve blush. "My legs. You lube them up and I clench them tight around your cock, and you make yourself come."

It wasn't fully successful. Steve perked up, his interest in the next round picking up, but the blush Tony had been hoping for didn't make an appearance.

"I guess we can give that a try," he conceded, clearly curious. "As long as you let me ride you again, if you've got another round in you."

With an amused huff, Tony nodded. "If I can go again, sure."

That wasn't guaranteed by any means, but he had no idea how long this sex powder would last. Hell, he had no idea how much time had passed. He had no idea whether Jan knew what was going on. Hoped she didn't. She would give him grief over this for weeks, on the basis that he was a superhero and ought have the guts to do something about his crush given the kinds of threats he faced down almost daily.

But, while she was right, he didn't.

Refocusing on the present, he watched, savouring the sensation, as Steve achingly slowly lifted himself off Tony's cock, and stripped off the rubber he'd used. He made a face at the mess and carefully disposed of it, taking a moment to clean himself off with another alcohol wipe as he did. When he was through, he turned and cleaned up Tony as well with a fresh wipe. Somehow the strong smell of the rubbing alcohol brought everything into sharp focus, against his expectations.

The cool touches sent a series of twitches and shudders up Tony's spine, making his hands clench and his toes curl. When he was through, Steve disposed of the wipe and turned back to Tony with a thoughtful expression. Without a word he reached down to wrap a hand firmly around the base of Tony's cock below the improvised ring, then used the other hand to slide it back up and off. He lingered when the ring sat just below the head of Tony's cock, fiddling with it and teasing, just to make Tony whine at him.

Taking a stuttering breath, Tony fumbled to string together the words to tell Steve to just take off the ring, and failed. The sight of Steve leaning down to lick at the cock in his hands was enough to make him thrash in his restraints, and Steve pulled back with a chuckle. The reprieve lasted just long enough for Steve to worry at the ring one last time with a look of lust on his face that nearly made Tony combust, before he pulled it off and licked at Tony's cock one more time, taking the head in his mouth.

His movements were just slightly hesitant, unpracticed, and they all but set Tony aflame. When Steve took his hands off Tony's cock, no longer holding him back from coming, that was it. He tried to hold himself back, to savour and enjoy what was happening, but there was no way. He had been on the edge of coming for too long.

Falling over the knife's edge, Tony felt his back arch as he came. It was a feeling that ran down every nerve and made his skin tingle. The world narrowed down to a pinpoint of light, like a star in the night, before it went supernova.

When awareness returned, he reopened his eyes, not having realized he'd closed them. 

Steve was watching him with an intent expression, clearly pleased with himself. For all that Tony kind of wanted to, he couldn't find it in himself to resent that. He felt wrecked, in the best possible way, and knew he probably looked it, too. He felt utterly spent, despite the continued bubbles of arousal that he felt rise to the surface of his consciousness.

They didn't say a word for a long minute, and Tony was glad for the chance to gather his scattered wits. Once he felt like he could string together a sentence, he forced the lingering tension out of his muscles. "Well, damn, Winghead," he quipped. "If I'd known you were that good in bed, I might have asked you long ago."

Steve gave him a wry look. "No, you wouldn't. You're too aware of your image."

"For you, I'd have chanced it," Tony found himself saying, without really meaning to. The honesty drawn out of him somehow.

Steve didn't pursue the point, somewhat to Tony's surprise, apparently more interested in instigating the next round. "Fine, we can talk about that later," he said, "right now, I want to try that thing you described."

Tony watched him carefully. Steve seemed to genuinely have set the question aside. Steve was also half-hard again already, and the sight made Tony question just how many rounds Steve had in him, because Jesus jumping Christ on a pogo stick. This was getting ridiculous.

"I have to ask," he asked Steve after a beat, "just how many times can you usually go?"

"Without whatever this is that's making us unable to hold back?" Steve riposted, his tone of voice desert dry.

"Yeah, without that." Tony bit back the rest of the words that threatened to pour out about just how fucking mind-meltingly hot this was. Even with the sex dust forcing them along.

Steve shrugged. "It varies? On my own, I stop after three." He made a face before he continued. "More and I get too sore to enjoy it."

"But you could keep going?" Why he was even asking, Tony wasn't sure. He wanted to know, sure, but knowing would only make things more awkward once this sex dust finally wore off.

Steve shrugged. "Probably? It was never important to me to find that particular limit."

Oddly, with that statement, something in the air of the room seemed to shift, and Tony felt the riptide of sex that had torn them under begin to subside. "Come on, then," he said, "something tells me that after this round we'll be done."

"You sure about that, Shellhead?" Steve raised an eyebrow at him. "As I recall, you were the one to make the guess that the powders wouldn't work on our systems."

Tony hid a wince. "I'm pretty sure," he shot back. "And, given that I had no readings to work with, then, I had to make an educated guess based on logic."

Steve snorted and reached for the lube. "Then I guess we'll see if your new guess is right."

With a leer, Tony replied. "Oh, come now, captain," he purred, "the consequences of an unknown powder could have been far more severe than this. And I don't know about you, but I've enjoyed every minute."

"Fair point," Steve agreed, relaxing, then waved the lube bottle at him. "You ready?"

"You might need another rubber for this," Tony pointed out.

Steve considered that. "Don't really want one. Can I try this and then your mouth?"

The lube would probably taste awful, but wouldn't hurt his system at all. Tony considered for a moment. "Wipe the lube off before you fuck my mouth, then. I don't think I have another round in me, though. Not after you held me back for so long."

Accepting that with a small lopsided smile tugging at his lips, Steve squirted some lube into his hand and waited. Tony stared at him for a moment before tilting his hips up and parting his legs as much as the Velcro restraints allowed.

"Go on," he encouraged. "Lube me up."

It didn't take a lot more encouragement for Tony to get Steve to try actually fucking his thighs. Without further ado, Steve used the lube on his hand to slick up Tony's skin, letting his fingers linger in all kinds of sensitive places. If he hadn't been tapped out, Tony would happily have tried to go one more round after all. The hot slippery slide of Steve's cock against his skin was a big turn-on, and so was having Steve basically sharing air with him. They were almost of a height, and that meant they ended up nose-to-nose in this position. 

Steve decided that was the perfect excuse to kiss him again, and Tony had no real complaints. He accepted then deepened the kiss, encouraging Steve to take what he needed. It worked, too. After a minute that felt more like half an hour, Steve broke the kiss, leaving Tony free to fight to take a steady breath. While he did his best to steady his breathing, Steve's movements picked up speed and force, making Tony squirm and moan with what little air he had left after that kiss.

Somehow, neither of them felt the need to break the silence building between them, as Steve chased his own pleasure. Nothing really needed to be said. And it left Tony the wherewithal to focus on the sensations Steve was pulling out of him. The delicious sweet friction between his legs and Steve's tight grip on his hips. The scent of clean sweat and leather that always seemed to stick to Steve, no matter how recently he'd showered. The hint of strain in Steve's expression as his eyes fell shut and his mouth open, everything else falling away except the need for _more_ and _harder_.

Lost in the haze of sensory input, it took Tony a few long seconds to realise that Steve had forced himself still, breathing hard, and biting at his lower lip in a clear attempt to maintain control of himself. "Tony?"

"Yeah?" Tony was pretty sure he knew what Steve wanted, and damn if the thought wasn't igniting a few sparks at the base of his own spine, despite the sure knowledge that he wasn't going to manage to get it up enough for another round anytime soon.

Steve pulled away, slowly, letting himself slip out out the tight clench of skin between Tony's legs, and pushed himself upright. "I'm close," he managed to grit out, "were you serious about letting me put it down your throat again?"

Tony had to clear his throat twice before his voice would work well enough to answer. "Damned right, I was," he said firmly. "C'mere."

Proving that he somehow had more attention left for such details than Tony, Steve grabbed for a dry wipe and cleaned himself off before he complied. He took his time getting the position and angle just right, which would have been one hell of a tease had Tony been hard enough to go again. When Steve decided he was happy with the way he was poised over Tony, hanging in midair, and ready to get on with the interesting part of this maneuver, he paused and gently wound his hands into Tony's hair.

The motion drew Tony's attention to the fact that his hair was sweat soaked after their activities. He would need a long thorough shower after this.

Before Tony could articulate anything to that effect, though, Steve drew his focus back to what they were doing, shifting until the head of his cock bumped against Tony's lips. Looking up to catch Steve's eyes, Tony licked at it with the tip of his tongue, not opening his mouth just yet. Steve had teased him mercilessly, after all, and turnabout was fair play.

The action made Steve's whole body jerk very satisfyingly, and pulled a low growl out of him. Tony smirked.

He was about to pull back enough to speak, when Steve decided enough was enough, and used his grip on Tony's hair to give him the leverage to gently pry Tony's jaw open. He'd gotten his teasing in, so Tony went with it. Taking the head of Steve's cock in his mouth sent sparks of fractured pleasure through him, the slightly salty taste of pre-come and and Steve's scent flooding over him.

When Steve started to slowly push deeper into his mouth, letting his cockhead rub against Tony's palate, it sent those sparks of pleasure jumping from his spine to the ends of his extremities and back, until they melded with the sensation of Steve's cock spreading his jaw wide open.

Tony choked and coughed when the head hit the back of his throat, caught unprepared for it, and Steve, ever the gentleman, waited him out, letting him catch his breath before he tried a second time.

That attempt worked out better, achingly slowly, Steve worked his cock farther and farther in, until Tony felt so full that he thought dazedly that the sensation might linger for days. He lost track of time, after that, as his world seemed to narrow down to the way Steve was fucking his mouth slowly and gently, letting him take a short huff of a breath after each thrust.

When Steve came, his whole body bowing with the force of it, curling forward around Tony as though he'd been sucker punched by it, Tony did what he could to make it more intense. Swallowing around Steve's cock as Steve shuddered got him a few loud moans and, at the end, an almost tortured cry of his name.

"Tony! Holy--!" Steve's grip on his hair tightened convulsively.

He didn't pull back, though, so Tony kept on, trying to pull as much pleasure out of him as he could.

Moaning loudly himself, at the feeling of Steve's still-hard cock twitching inside him, Tony enjoyed the wordless shout and jerk of Steve's hips he got in response. Had his hands been free, he would have used them to touch and tease Steve's cock through the skin of his throat. 

Instead, he used his tongue to massage and tease the base without letting up his attempts to pull a second orgasm out of Steve. 

It worked, too, somewhat to both their surprise. A few seconds later, Steve jolted as though he'd touched a live wire, every muscle going taut and straining, as he came again.

Tony let up, starting to feel the effects of having to hold his breath for so long, while Steve tried vainly to catch his breath in the aftermath. "Jesus, Tony," he gasped out, "your mouth."

If his mouth hadn't been rather occupied at the moment, Tony would have smirked smugly. Humming his agreement got him a creative series of swear words, and Steve pulled back.

Tony took a breath the moment he could, then stared up at Steve, sucking lightly at the head of Steve's cock.

Steve let himself enjoy it for a few seconds, then pulled out entirely. He looked as wrecked as Tony felt, now, with his hair totally askew and remnants of lube and come all over him. Thanks to their efforts throughout their fling, though, they were less messy than most of his quickies had ever left Tony. 

Tony drifted lazily in the afterglow, not bothering to move, until Steve reached down and undid the velcro around his wrists.

"Come on, Tony," he said as he pulled Tony into a sitting position, "we should check in with Jan, and then get some rest."

Rousing somewhat, Tony sat up and stretched, unheedful of the way it made him drift upward off the lab bench. "Sleep sounds perfect right now," he responded.

With a fondly amused shake of his head, Steve undid the velcro around his ankles, and made a dismayed sound when he saw the red lines the harsh material of the straps had left on Tony's skin, touching them with gentle fingers. His arms had come away clear, because of the looseness of the restraints, but his legs hadn't. Thanks to the movements he'd been making, no doubt. 

He caught Steve's face in his hands and forced him to look away from the 'injury'. "Steve," he said, "it's just chafed a little. Those marks'll be gone in a few hours.

Steve eyed him skeptically, and Tony just knew Steve was remembering other injuries Tony had played down over the years.

Steve couldn't argue this one, though, and gave in with a nod. "You calling Jan?"

Tony made a face. "Might as well." He paused, then added teasingly, "explaining this will be all kinds of awkward, and knowing you, you'd just stutter over saying it for half an hour."

Steve shrugged, but didn't bother denying the point. "I'll check our heading, then, and take first watch if you want to get some shut-eye."

Sleep would be a welcome reprieve, at this point. Tony nodded. "Sounds good, thanks."

Dealing with their -- probably very late -- check in would take patience. Luckily, they weren't being directly monitored by Houston throughout that little escapade, so he and Steve would only have to explain the loss of the feed of Steve's vitals to NASA. Jan, on the other hand, would probably grill them about this for long time.

His shirt back on, Tony settled himself in the pilot's seat and took a moment to gather his thoughts. Clearing his throat and pressing the comm call button, he tried not to think too much about what had happened.

"Iron Man! Oh my god, we were worried!" Jan sounded pretty freaked out. Tony winced.

"We're fine. Had a bit of an accident with the samples we took, once we were back aboard, and we had to quarantine ourselves in the instrument room until we could deal with it."

Tony could almost hear the flat look she was giving the mic. "What accident?" She asked, acidly.

"Well, I'd really rather this not get out," he responded. "Not even to NASA. So I'm keeping that to myself for now."

"Fine," she sniffed. "I'll ask Steve later."

"It was nothing serious," he assured her. "But we'll have to destroy the rest of the things we took samples of, and justify it to NASA. So brace yourself for that."

"Okay, dish," Jan demanded.

"Well, we found some powders that seem to lower inhibitions quite drastically," Tony gave in and told her, "it's very similar to being drunk. We need to destroy them for safety reasons."

He could tell from her tone that she didn't believe him. "You're not telling me everything," she accused.

"Not right now, no," Tony admitted. "Once we're home."


	7. Day 6

The call to Jan taken care of, the two of them followed the plan they'd laid out, an unspoken agreement to talk about this later -- if at all -- heavily implied in the silence.

On Tony's part, at least.

He didn't want to deal with that particular heartbreak right now. They had a mission to finish and a trip home to survive. And, before all that, he wanted to clean up and get some rest.

Feeling like all his limbs were weighted down with lead, Tony carefully made his way to the tiny bathroom at the back of the 'jet, near their sleeping quarters to painstakingly clean off the remains of the come and lube all over him. He couldn't seem to _not_ think about the amazing sex as he did it, though. The memory of the way Steve had touched him seemed to echo through his body and made him wish so hard that it was more than casual that it almost felt like his skin tingled.

By the time he was clean, the tingle was more than just psychosomatic. Without a proper shower to clean off in, he'd been forced to use the combination of high-grade shop de-greaser and scrub brush to clean up as much as he could before he went after the rest with a moistened washcloth. It took him a while to feel like he'd gotten enough of it off his skin to be comfortable pulling his spare set of coveralls on and sleeping.

Weirdly, even the knowledge that Steve only wanted a one-night-stand wasn't all that upsetting at the moment. 

It should have been. Would have been, under just about any other circumstances. And probably would be after he'd slept off the sex-high.

With a weary sigh quiet enough to count as half a yawn, Tony zipped himself into his sleeping bag and closed his eyes, certain sleep would be a long time in coming.

An instant later, Steve was prodding at him verbally. "Hey Shellhead," he called, "you awake?"

Forcing his eyes open and glancing at the clock mounted over the door of the sleeping quarters, Tony groaned. He let the sound carry out to Steve, and pointedly didn't speak.

Steve laughed. "Come on. It's your turn at the controls."

"Alright, alright," Tony rubbed at the grit in his eyes and winced at the scratches it left against tender skin, "keep your pants on. You wore me out, Winghead."

Steve appeared in the doorway of the sleeping quarters as Tony unzipped his sleeping bag and let himself drift free of it.

"Any changes?" Tony asked, groping around for his suit helmet for several seconds before he remembered he'd left it in the instrument room.

"Nothing worth waking you up for. A few minor course adjustments, and Hank called to tell us that NASA want a full report on the samples we took that 'lowered inhibitions', since we intend to destroy them as a safety measure." Steve raised an eyebrow at him as he said the last few words, eloquently expressing his skepticism about Tony's willingness to take that somewhat drastic step.

Tony nodded. He pushed gently off the wall and drifted over to grab onto the opposite side of the doorway, putting him face to face with Steve. From here he could see that Steve wasn't wearing a comm or radio headset. "Alright," he admitted quietly, "you've caught me. I want to take a couple more samples of each of those powders first, but I want them for private analysis. NASA being a government organisation, they'd likely either make these disappear or sell them to the highest bidder. Imagine what would happen if someone let some of this loose somewhere strategically important, like a military base. All they'd have to do is airdrop a few vials of it and the whole base is incapacitated for however long. I want to take some home and get Hank to help me find an antidote. Preferably without anyone else getting a hold of these powders in the meantime."

Steve considered that for a long minute before he nodded. "Much as I hate to admit it, you have a point."

Tony ducked around Steve, and headed for the instrumentation room for his armour. "Get some rest, Winghead," he called over his shoulder. "I'll wake you a couple of hours before we make our last scheduled spacewalk."

Settling in the pilot's seat and checking the controls, Tony smiled slightly to see that everything was dialed in perfectly. Steve always had learned quickly, and apparently picking up how to fly the quinjet was no exception. 

\------

Just over four hours later, Steve roused and came back out of the sleeping quarters. Tony glanced up as his teammate appeared in the cockpit door.

"Hey, Cap," he greeted. "Thought you'd sleep another couple of hours. We're not due to start the last spacewalk for another three and a half."

Steve shrugged and set his forearms on the seat beside Tony, not sitting down. "Something woke me and I couldn't seem to settle again after that. You hungry?"

Reminded that he hadn't eaten since before their sexual escapades, Tony nodded. "I could eat."

"Let me see what we have left in the galley," Steve offered, pushing off the chair and making what almost felt like a tactical retreat.

Biting back a groan at the way things seemed to immediately be awkward between them, Tony scrubbed at his face with his hands. He suddenly felt weary and wanted to be home where he could lock himself in his workshop for a day or two and let this blow over.

Steve was pretty obviously looking for ways to escape his company, if he was resorting to cooking. He usually only bothered for team dinners, otherwise. And no, he told Jan mentally, that didn't mean he was special. They'd had this conversation before, and she just wouldn't see reason.

Putting those unproductive thoughts aside, Tony tried to compose the next hourly check-in in his head. There wasn't much to report. By the time he had it more or less worked out -- not that it took long -- Steve reappeared with two servings of instant coffee in bottles and another two of instant soup.

They ate in silence, both wrapped up in their own thoughts. At least, Tony assumed Steve was. He looked faraway and almost melancholy.

It was pretty obvious he regretted that they'd gotten hit by the sex dust. Steve, Tony was pretty sure, would have preferred not to have it be with him, based on the look Steve was wearing. As though he wished someone else had been in the room. Some past lover maybe. Or maybe just someone female.

Finished with his coffee and soup, and less hungry for it, Tony picked up the comm set and called home. Thor picked up.

"Man of Iron," the god called cheerfully, "how proceeds your mission?"

"Nothing to report since the last check-in," Tony replied, unable to stop the small smile that Thor's enthusiasm always seemed to require in response. "We're getting ready for the last spacewalk, and intend to break orbit shortly after, as planned in the schedule."

"Excellent! It will be good to have you both back on solid ground with us."

Tony had to agree with the sentiment. "We're looking forward to it, too. If nothing else, I want a long hot shower!"

They exchanged a few more pleasantries and technical details, and Tony promised to send on some data NASA wanted, and then the cockpit was silent again.

Eventually, Steve broke it. "We need to do anything else besides get you your samples, Shellhead?" he asked.

"Not that I know of," Tony said, thinking back and then double checking the log to be sure. "Other than a few more photos, nope. Looks like we're in the clear. As we leave, we'll detach the line securing the ship, as well."

\------

The spacewalk itself went off without a hitch this time. Tony got his samples, sealed them carefully, put them in a sample box, sealed _that_ , and then attached it to the strap of his camera with a carabiner clip and some velcro. Sure, it was overkill, but at this point it was warranted.

Given what had happened last time, Tony really preferred this option. And they wouldn't be opening any of the samples until they were safely on Earth, in the Mansion, and under vacuum. He would make damned sure there wasn't a repeat of what had happened yesterday. Well, as much as possible, he amended. Given that the temple itself was magic, it was possible that the sex powder was, too, and that normal scientific precautions wouldn't work in stopping it from affecting them.

"Iron Man?" Steve was looking at him expectantly, holding out the camera he was apparently done with. "I can take the other set of pictures if you're not finished."

Shaking his head to clear it of the wandering thoughts, Tony hurried to comply. He handed Steve the other camera, carefully unclipping the sample box from it before he handed it over. "Sure, here. I've just gotta deal with the rest of these powders and then we're done here."

Turning his repulsors on and detuning the frequency until the bright blue-white glow approached far infrared, he turned them on the powders and watched carefully. Somewhat to his surprise, considering the intensity of the solar radiation out here, the powders quickly melted and shrank until they resembled the remains of burned out candles. Waxy residues lined all three of the containers, and Tony found himself wishing for a few more sample tubes. What he'd gathered would have to do.

Fifteen minutes later, Steve was making his way back to the Avenjet, cameras and sample box in tow, and Tony was waiting to follow once he'd unclipped the tether line from the temple.

Another ten minutes, and the tether line was undone, one end in his hand. The reel at the other end was winding it efficiently back up, towing Tony back toward the Avenjet and the end of the mission.

It was kind of surreal to think that they'd already spent almost a week in space.

Things were drawing to a close, now, though, and that was something of a relief. He'd be glad not to be trapped in the same space as Steve anymore. One of the best things about living in the Mansion was that he could escape to his workshop when he needed space to think or be alone. Here, that wasn't a luxury that either of them was afforded.

\------

Once they were well away from the Moon and on their way home, Tony engaged the autopilot and sat back in his seat with a sigh.

"Well," he said, "that was an adventure."

Steve didn't reply, so Tony went on, trying to fill the oddly expectant silence in a way that let him retreat more or less gracefully. He didn't want Steve to immediately come chasing after him. "I'll be in the sleeping quarters. Somehow I'm still tired, so I'm gonna get some sleep while things are quiet."

Of course, he realized as he said the words, Steve was just as likely to be suspicious of that approach as almost any other. Before Steve could say a word, Tony left the room. He pointedly ignored the voice in the back of his head that sounded like Jan and told him he was being a coward, choosing instead to run off to hide from Steve's censure.

To his surprise, Steve gave him him half a day alone. Tony spent it doing his best to work through what had happened. He needed to get over the hurt and calm himself down, or Steve wouldn't let this go. He knew better than to expect that from his friend. Steve was stubborn as hell and not known for letting such things go easily.

When he pried Tony out of their shared sleeping quarters with the excuse that he needed to come check the navigation systems, Tony went without protest.

"What seems to be the problem, Winghead?" He asked as he sat down at the controls and began running through his mental checklist.

"I'm not sure?" Steve didn't actually sound all that confused, and Tony started getting suspicious. "The display turned off randomly and wouldn't come back for about ten seconds, but when I checked it nothing seemed to be wrong."

That sounded potentially bad, but not life-threatening. They could still land the jet without the automated nav systems. Re-entry would be a bit hairy, though.

Tony turned to Steve to say just that, and startled when he found himself nose-to-nose with his friend.

Tony swallowed. "Cap?" That had come out more hesitant than it should have. Tony forced the knowledge away and straightened his shoulders. "Did you need something?" He asked, not giving an inch of ground.

"Yeah," Steve replied, turning Tony's chair on its swiveling base and depositing himself in Tony's lap, "you."

That statement almost made Tony swallow his tongue. It had to still be the sex dust talking. There was no way Steve would say that otherwise.

"Winghead," he got out, and then Steve's lips came down on his and the rest of his sentence was very effectively muffled. Steve kissed him thoroughly, leaving Tony dazed and fighting for air. It was just as hot and slick and wet as it had been yesterday, and damned if Tony wasn't very quickly developing a taste for it. For Steve.

That was dangerous.

Right now, with Steve in his arms and doing sinful things with his tongue, wasn't the time to worry about it, though.

Deciding to roll with it -- if Steve wanted this from him, Tony wasn't about to turn him down -- Tony finally managed to move from just accepting the kiss to returning it.

Things escalated quickly from there, and Tony found himself gripping the armrests of the chair for dear life as Steve rode him, using nothing but his own strength to fuck himself on Tony's cock, both of them still wearing most of their clothes. 

It was amazing.

By the time Steve let him come, Tony had been treated to watching Steve come twice in quick succession, but this time he wasn't the least bit frustrated about it.

And, Tony noted, more amused than anything else, Steve had put on a rubber under his clothes, the sneaky tactician. It had been very efficient in keeping the mess contained and Steve's plan from being so obvious it might as well have been written in neon.

They sat, their faces so close that their breaths mingled, and leaned lightly against one another as they caught their breath.

He was, Tony realized, completely fucked.


	8. Day 7: Re-Entry

They hadn't bothered transmitting back the last batches of photos, reasoning that the NASA team had enough to puzzle over, and there wasn't much novel information on the cameras, and their conversations with Jan, Hank, and Thor hadn't given them any reason to doubt that assessment.

So things had been quiet. He and Steve had traded shifts at the controls as they did on the way out, and Tony spent most of his time alternately distracting himself with trying (unsuccessfully) to find the glitch in the navigation systems and with several new armour designs he wanted to build and test once he had access to his workshop again.

It wasn't until they were just over an hour away from re-entry that Steve broke his silence.

"Shellhead," he said quietly, "I know that this will change the way we work together, and I want you to know that you don't have to go hiding in your workshop once we get back."

Steve definitely knew him too well. Tony wanted to shake his head. "It's not hiding if I have work to catch up on for SI."

"It is if you don't come out for days on end," Steve argued.

Deciding to let that go, Tony shrugged. "I have everything I need down there, you know."

Steve gave him a skeptical look. "I know how you get about things that involve your friends. You tie yourself in knots trying to take the blame for whatever happened. Well, I have something to tell you: this wasn't your fault."

Tony snorted. "Oh? That's not the case and you know it. If I hadn't insisted on messing with those powders, we wouldn't have had this interpersonal disaster. But we can argue over that later. First let's get the Avenjet back on the ground."

That seemed to work quite effectively to shut Steve up, but Tony knew he would only use the time to marshal his arguments.

\------

In the end it was Jan that outed them both, and short circuited the argument they'd both been steeling themselves for.

She took one look at them as they stepped out of the Avenjet on the Mansion grounds carrying the cameras they'd used in the last spacewalk and grinned broadly. "Oh my god, _finally_!" She exclaimed, gleefully, making them exchange confused glances. Behind her Hank and Thor snickered.

Steve caught raised an eloquent eyebrow at her. "Finally what?"

"Well," Jan replied, "not to put too fine a point on it, we're all glad you two decided to end the mutual pining. It was getting ridiculous how much you two were mooning over each other, each convinced the other wouldn't be interested." She paused, giving them a meaningful look. "I'll be disappointed if you two don't end up being utter saps."

Caught totally flat-footed, Tony stared at Steve, who was giving Jan an utterly horrified look. "Wait," he hissed at her, "you knew how we both felt and said nothing?"

Thor interceded. "You both swore her to secrecy," he pointed out.

That made Steve even redder, and lit a tiny bit of hope in Tony that he couldn't seem to quench.

"You told Thor and Hank," Steve complained.

Jan rolled her eyes at him. "Tony, take him upstairs and calm him down. And maybe _talk_." She sniffed at Steve. "It seems like you two still have a few things to work out."

Not sure what the hell had just happened, Tony shrugged and threw an arm around Steve's shoulders. "Come on, Cap," he said, "something tells me she's right." Over his shoulder he added, "there's a last batch of photos in the cameras that need to be passed on to NASA, and we'll need to organize a time for them to come get their instruments. And don't go on the jet until we can get it decontaminated. There's some cleaning to be done before we use it again."

"Fine," she replied, "noted. But don't think this gets you out of giving me those details you promised!"

\------

With all the things that needed to be done before NASA would allow them to leave the mansion, though, it wasn't until the following morning that he and Steve had that conversation and Tony was all but burning up for sheer intensity of the mixed curiosity and dread he felt at the idea of finding out what Jan had meant. Steve had cornered him in his study, halfway through the four inch stack of paperwork Mrs. Arbogast had brought him the moment he'd been back on solid ground, and Tony had known what it was he wanted without needing to ask. This whole tangled mess of feeling between them that their mission to the Moon had brought out into the open had doubtless been on Steve's mind the whole time. It had sure as hell been nagging at Tony.

"Tony," Steve prompted after letting the silence draw out a little, clearly less nervous about this than Tony was, "what Jan said about it being mutual... Was that true?"

Far from comfortable with admitting it, but not about to lie to Steve if he had a chance of this working out in his favor, Tony swallowed hard around the lump in his throat and nodded. "Yeah," he managed to say without sounding choked, "but if all you want is something casual, I'm fine with that."

Steve had outright said that it was just for the day, and given the effects of the powders, Tony had no doubt that he'd meant it. There was no way he wanted any kind of permanent arrangement. Tony knew that.

"Casual?" Steve echoed, sounding puzzled. "What are you talking about?"

"You said as much when we got hit by that powder," Tony reminded him. "Hell, you don't even like men that way. Everything that happened between us was under the effects of what amounts to a sex drug."

Even if Steve did think he wanted a relationship with him, Tony knew that it couldn't last. Whether because he realised that he'd made a mistake or because the effect of those alien drugs finally wore off. They had no idea what those drugs did, besides make them incredibly horny. Tony suspected that one of them had been a truth drug, though, judging by the way he'd kept blurting out things he hadn't actually intended to say.

Steve's very confusion in the face of what he'd said during their brief fling and what Tony had understood it to mean was a point that supported the conclusion Tony had come to. First of all, if Steve was serious about this whole relationship thing, he wouldn't have made that comment during their brief liaison in space about it being 'just for tonight'. And then there was his reaction now. Right now, Steve wasn't the confident decisive man Tony had always known. If Steve were sure about what he was asking, his whole demeanour would be different.

And then, on top of all that, they had no way of knowing whether one of the after effects was some kind of lingering emotional attachment. He'd already been in love with Steve. Had been for a long time, if he was honest with himself. But that meant he had no way of determining whether Steve was lying to himself, or actually did feel something for him. Realistically, though, the odds weren't in his favor, and Tony knew it. Life had a way of screwing him over, over and over again. In everything from his track record with the Avengers, to his attempts to date, to his somewhat shaky hold on his own company.

All things considered, Tony knew better than to expect anything from Steve. Whether Steve knew that or not.

Steve was watching him closely, his puzzled expression deepening as Tony thought everything through. After a beat, he shook his head as if to clear it, the puzzlement clearing, only to be replaced by determination. Huh, there was Cap, come back out of hiding. "I have no clue what I said that gave you that crazy idea," he said slowly, "but that's not what I meant."

Tony nodded, trying to work out what that shift in body language actually meant. "What do you want, then?"

"Isn't it obvious? Tony, I want to at least try for something long-term. And we already know we can live together."

"The sex is pretty good too," Tony joked, testing to see what the reaction would be.

Steve gave him a calculating look. "Is that a hint?"

"If you like," Tony shrugged, careful not to let his tension show. He was totally off balance, and didn't like it, and wondering what exactly Steve wanted from him wasn't helping matters. "But we probably ought to talk a few things out first. Look, Steve, we have no idea what those powders did to us, and until we do, it'll overshadow every move we make."

His attraction to Steve had always been rather like a gravitational pull. Steady, strong, and unwavering, despite the years he'd spent denying it. Hearing that, hearing that Steve felt the same? Tony wasn't sure he believed it.

He was sticking to his initial decision to take whatever he could get, but he knew Steve was likely to get bored at some point, or find someone better.

That was just how it always went.

At least, this time, he could be fairly sure he wouldn't be adding to his (surprisingly long) list of crazy ex-es.

The look Steve was giving him was ever so promising, though. Like he wanted to take Tony and tumble him into bed on the spot. "You're probably right about that," he said slowly, "but we can call Dr. Strange, for a second opinion."

Tony made a face. "That arrogant ass?"

"He is the Sorcerer Supreme, Tony," Steve pointed out. "He wouldn't be if he didn't have some idea what he was doing."

Somewhat reluctantly, but knowing he'd feel much better if he knew what was going on, Tony nodded. "Alright, we'll give him a call. But not tonight. If I have to try to deal with him in addition to all this paperwork, there's a good chance it'll end badly."

Steve snorted, biting back what Tony was pretty sure would have been a fond smile. "Dramatic as usual. Alright. We can table the issue for now, but I intend to revisit it after Stephen has given us his expert advice."

"Sure," Tony agreed, watching Steve warily. He knew Steve wouldn't budge on this issue. He never did once he'd firmly made up his mind. That was actually another very good reason against allowing this relationship to progress beyond a one-night stand. If Steve made up his mind under the influence of that sex powder, and regretted it once Stephen came by and broke its hold on him it would only devastate them both and wreck any chance they had of ever working together again.

Steve was eyeing him like he knew what Tony was thinking. "I have a feeling that we'll have to have a few more of these talks as we go."

"Probably," Tony conceded.

"Now that we've got that sorted out," Steve responded with a smirk, "let's go find something to eat. You'll be less grumpy if you've got some calories in you."

He'd have preferred something very different in him, Tony reflected, but he knew that he wasn't likely to get his wish. At least Steve wasn't pushing him away entirely, willing to keep to safe ground for now and treat him the way he always had. Tony could only hope things would stay as they were. Wishing for more was liable to break him.

In typical fashion, once he'd made his decision, Steve moved quickly. Two days later, Stephen appeared in the living room of the mansion in a cloud of pink dust.

\------

Six months later, things were somehow still working out for the two of them, and Tony had found himself relaxing a little. Maybe Steve had been serious about this relationship thing after all.

Tony looked around the meeting room, at the assembled team, enjoying the fact that their roster had stayed stable since that mission to space six months before. It was always nice when that happened. He always seemed to get used to having certain people and skills around on missions, and when the roster changed Tony invariably found himself wanting to make a joke only someone absent would understand, or needing assistance only they could have given. That wouldn't be the case this time, though.

They'd gotten a message from Namor just over an hour ago. Apparently some strange magical temple had appeared near the surface of the North Atlantic, and, since they had experience dealing with magical temples, they should come look at it and deal with it.

Steve had made a resigned noise on getting the message and caught Tony's eye. "Namor will never shut up about it, if we don't go. You with me, Shellhead?"

"If it's anything like the last magical temple we visited," Tony joked, "this should be fun. Do we invite the others along?"

Having heard the full story from them a few days after the mission and their return, Jan huffed. "I think I'll leave the dangerous sexcapades to you two, thanks," she quipped. "Just thinking about you two going at it in space, where the tiniest air leak could kill, was freaky enough. I'd personally rather not get whammied while underwater."

Which was a good point.

Tony made a mental note to make sure their gear could safely accommodate that kind of eventuality.

After all, Steve was right about Namor, and he hadn't even factored in Tony's curiosity. Even despite his dislike of magic, he wanted to know more about it. If only so that he could avoid it. He hadn't had much luck in analyzing the samples he'd brought home. They'd mysteriously degraded the moment the sample box had been opened, despite still being under vacuum. They were probably magic powders, Tony had concluded. No normal material worked that way.

They spent the next couple of days in contact with Namor and preparing their gear. Steve and Tony would be going alone, as they had for the last magic temple, but this time they would be taking the submarine. Jan, Hank, and Thor, not required to play ground control this time, would be on call to deal with any disasters or supervillain attacks.

Tony, himself, well. He found he was almost looking forward to this mission.

**Works inspired by this one:**

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